'virtual CD' or 'CD emulator', they mean that you can copy the entire contents of a CD-ROM to your hard disk and run the programs or access the files without the need for the original CD/DVD/HD DVD/Blu-ray . This can make files more accessible, faster and more convenient. Given the speed and size of today's hard drives, you could easily fit a number of CDs onto your hard drive without noticing the difference. Assuming you had 30 full CDs, these would take around 20GB on a hard drive and all will be accessible after a few clicks of a mouse. Hard drives are about 10-50 times faster than a CD, plus you can instantly access the file instead of grabbing the CD case, inserting the CD and awaiting for the contents to load. It's true, you could try copying the files over to the hard drive, but this can get messy, plus some programs require a CD to be loaded in order to run.

Here is a list of FREE CD/DVD Emulators or virtual drives that may suit your purpose:

DAEMON Tools Lite v4.30.4 (with SPTD 1.58)

DAEMON Tools is an advanced application for Microsoft Windows which provides one of the best optical media emulation in the industry.

With DAEMON Tools you can back up your physical CD/DVD/HD DVD/Blu-ray discs into "virtual discs" or so called "disc image" files, which run directly on your hard drive. You can also work with images created by other burning programs! DAEMON Tools supports variety of image types. Use CD/DVD image converter to have one format images in your Image Catalog!

A virtual disc has much better access rates than a physical one in a corresponding physical drive because the reading speed of a virtual CD/DVD/HD DVD/Blu-ray-ROM is 50x faster compared to normal drive.

With DAEMON Tools you would receive up to 32 virtual SCSI drives and 2 virtual IDE drives that behave just like the "real" physical ones.

No more CD/DVD drive noise. No waiting for disc loading. No need to buy external optical drive for your netbook. DAEMON Tools enables you to use your CD/DVD images as if they were already burned to CD/DVD.

 

There are no limitations on this version, other than the ability to create only 6 virtual drives. Our retail version still supports 31 virtual drives.

Remember you can not run Alcohol 52% if you have Alcohol 120% installed on the same drive.

This version of Alcohol 52% is for private, non-commercial, single home computer use only.The license is provided personally to you and for that reason it does not allow you to make any duplicate (copy) to be sold, borrowed, assigned, leased or transferred.

Emulation software allowing users to play CDs DVDs without the need for the physical disc. Notebook users and PC Game players would benifit the most from Alcohol 52% Supports 25 plus languages Can handle up to 6 virtual CD DVD-ROM drives, all at once. The reading speed of a virtual CD-ROM is 200X.

This means you can play a CD from the virtual CD-ROM with 200X reading speed. Supports normal CD DVD and CD RAW sub-channel reading methods: RAW reading method enables to emulate all CDs.

CD formats supported: CD-DA, CD+G, CD-ROM, CD-XA, Video CD, Photo CD, Mixed Mode, Multi-session CD DVD formats supported: DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-Audio Support for all current (ATAPI SCSI) drives: CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-RAM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW Full support for IEEE-1394 (Firewire) and USB protocols.

Gizmo Drive v2.7.6

• Mount ISO, BIN, CUE, NRG files to a virtual CD-ROM drive

• Mount VHD files, used with Microsoft Virtual PC

• Mount password protected images to a virtual hard drive

• Encrypt HD images using a passphrase

• Protect vital files from hackers using encrypted HD images

• Mount IMG files to a virtual drive

• Mount and unmount files from the Windows Shell

• Mount and unmount files from the command line

• Support for compression and sparse HD images

MagicDisc is freeware. It is very helpful utility designed for creating and managing virtual CD drives and CD/DVD discs. For anyone who deals with CD-based programs – it is a MUST. MagicDisc allows you to use almost all CD/DVD image without burning them onto CD or DVD in order to easily access your favorite games, music, or software programs ---- It works like a real CD/DVD-ROM: You can run programs, play games, or listen to music from your virtual CD-ROM. Allowing you to run your game images at over 200x faster than from a conventional CD/DVD-ROM. MagicDisc is a powerful utility that uses a unique combination of options to ensure a perfect back-up every time. Partner with MagicISO, Your original games/program discs can be safely stored away, MagicISO mean that you always have your expensive media stored safely as CD/DVD image file on your hard drive, and use them with MagicDisc just like using the original discs. At the office: Program discs and many other applications generally require the original disc to be in the computer's CD-ROM drive. This restricts the amount of people in your office who can have access to the same software at the same time without the cost of additional discs. MagicDisc virtual drives resolve that problem for you. No more hunting around the offices for that elusive disc you need to run your application, everything you require is just a click away.
All supported CD/DVD image formats
BIN (CDRWin)
IMA/IMG (Generic disk images)
CIF (Easy CD Creator)
NRG (Nero - Burning ROM)
IMG/CCD (CloneCD)
MDF/MDS (Fantom CD)
VCD (Farstone Virtual Drive)
VaporCD (Noum Vapor CDROM)
P01/MD1/XA (Gear)
VC4/000 (Virtual CD)
VDI (Virtuo CD Manager)
C2D (WinOnCD)
BWI/BWT (BlinkWrite)
CDI (DiscJuggler)
TAO/DAO (Duplicator)
PDI (Instant Copy)
MagicDisc has automatically Detecting engine, so user try to open any CD/DVD image files with MagicDisc.

Phantom CD

Phantom CD is a virtual CD/DVD/Blu-ray emulator. Mount your CD/DVD/Blu-ray image files as virtual CD/DVD/Blu-ray disc with Phantom CD.

Use disc images for your CD, DVD and Blu-ray backup. Replace your physical discs to avoid wear and tear on your optical drive, and to avoid disc problems resulted from heat, scratch, and dirt. Enjoy reading speed up to 200 times faster than a physical disc, allowing your application and games to start and run faster.

 Virtual CloneDrive works and behaves just like a physical CD/DVD drive, however it exists only virtually. Image files generated with CloneDVD or CloneCD can be mounted onto a virtual drive from your hard-disk or from a network drive and used in the same manner as inserting them into a normal CD/DVD drive.

Probably the best virtual drive software, Virtual CloneDrive allows you to enjoy the freedom of a virtual drive and is completely free.

PowerISO

PowerISO is a powerful CD/DVD image file processing tool, which allows you to open, extract, create, edit, compress, encrypt, split and convert ISO files, and mount these files with internal virtual drive. It can process almost all CD-ROM image files including ISO and BIN.

Main Features:

Support almost all CD/DVD-ROM image file formats(ISO, BIN, NRG, CDI, DAA and so on).

Note:

DAA(Direct-Access-Archive) is an advanced format for image file, which supports some advanced features, such as compression, password protection, and splitting to multiple volumes. It can be handled directly just like other formats, such as ISO, BIN, ...

Support both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows.

Open and extract ISO File.

Create ISO file from hard disk files or CD/DVD-ROM.

Edit an existing ISO file directly.

Convert image files between ISO/BIN and other formats. PowerISO can convert almost all image file formats to standard ISO format file.

Make bootable ISO file, get boot information from bootable ISO file.

Make floppy disk image file.

Optimize files to save disk space while saving ISO file.

Mount ISO file with internal virtual drive. You don't need install any other virtual drive software.

Can be used easily. PowerISO supports shell integration, context menu, drag and drop, clipboard copy paste...

TotalMounter

KernSafe TotalMounter is an advanced and powerful virtual CD/DVD-ROM/RW/RAM emulator, and it is full-featured free software for windows. TotalMounter is also a free full-featured iSCSI initiator, virtual disks emulator, and a client of INetDisk. Its goal is to mount everything, you can not only mount a CD/DVD images (such as iso, bin, cdi, mdf, ccd, nrg etc.) as a virtualized drive, and also make these images by creating a CD/DVD-RW virtualized drive and burning data into it by burning software.

· Provides a CD/DVD-ROM emulator that mounting image files such as iso, cdi, bin, mds, mdf, img, raw, ccd, nrg in to a virtual CD/DVD-ROM drive.
· Provides a CD/DVD-RW/RAM emulator that you can create "write" data into an CD/DVD drive, and you can also create ISO9660 files by using CD burning software.
· Provides a iSCSI Initiator for mount iStorage Server and other iSCSI Target.
· Provides a INetDisk client for mount INetDisk Server.
· Provides Virtual Write technology , so that you can copy files into a read-only drive and do not affect the peoples using other clients.
· Provides a network-bridged method. It exports an existing partition, disk, CD/DVD-ROM to clients as a virtual iSCSI drive.
· Provides as max as 8 virtual drives.
· Provides simple and banausic management tool, to manage virtual drives.
· Support for x86 and x64 machines.
· No restrictions on disk capacity, total number of hard disk installed, number of CPUs or CPU cores, and the amount of RAM.
· Fully conforms to the latest iSCSI Standard 1.0 (former Draft 20).