Creating An ISO Image On Windows 7

An ISO image is the digital copy of an optical disc. You can make ISO images from compact discs (CD), digital versatile/video discs (DVD) or Blu-ray discs (BD).

The cool thing about ISO images is you can store them on your hard drive so you don't have to carry discs around with you.

When loaded (the official term is mounted) using ISO software, your computer can view the ISO images as if the disc was loaded in your disc drive.

You could also burn the ISO image to an actual disc in the future, and it will be an exact replica of your original disc.

Do note that audio CDs cannot be created as ISO images.

There are lots of software available to create ISO images on your Windows 7 computer. We will be using ISO Recorder, a free ISO image creator for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Let's go download the software we need:

1. Head over to the ISO Recorder download page for Windows 7.
2. Choose 32 bit or 64 bit depending on your Windows 7 version, and save the file to your computer.

Now let's get ISO Recorder running on the PC:

1. Start the installation application, which should be ISORecorder31x86.msi or ISORecorder31x64.msi
2. Accept all the default installation options.
3. When the installation is complete, you are ready to start creating ISO images!
4. You may be prompted to restart your PC, but I didn't have to.

Load a disc in your computer's disc drive:

1. Go to Computer and right-click on your disc drive. There should be a new option to "Create image from CD/DVD".

2. Choose a location to store your image file.

3. ISO recorder will begin copying your disc contents into an ISO image.

After the image has been created, you will see the .ISO file at your destination folder.

There's all there is to it!

Please share your experience with other ISO recorder and ISO reader software in the comments section.