Click Tips: Virtual optical drives

Rob Freeman, Click's very own Mr Fixit, looks at how you can store all your CDs and DVDs.

I am going to show you a neat way to help manage a clutter of CDs and DVDs which is going to be particularly helpful for people with a laptop, or if you travel a lot with your machine.

The innovation is the virtual optical drive and a file format called ISO.

A virtual drive is a piece of software which mimics a CD or DVD player and an ISO is a full copy of a CD or DVD.

ISO files were created as a format for backing up or archiving CDs.

If the worst happened to your original, you could burn the ISO file back onto a blank disc which would re-create the original CD.

Snapshot

There are several formats out there that do exactly the same thing, but I am going to focus on ISOs this time.

First of all, you will need some commercial disc burning software such as Nero and Roxio.

But if you do not have either of these, there is a free option. For instance, I like ISO recorder written by Alex Feinman.

Keep in mind that we are not copying the files off the CD, we are simply taking a snapshot of the entire disc's contents.

This particular piece of software does not create image files of video or audio discs, but you are still making an exact copy.

This means that if use it to copy discs which do not belong to you, then you are breaking the law.

Advantages

Previously the only reason most people would create an ISO file was so they could burn a new CD.

But then some clever person realised they could emulate an optical drive using software.

It tells your computer that you have a CD or DVD drive when you do not - hence a virtual optical drive.

Roxio Creator is one example of commercial software that will do this.

But I am going to use Daemon Tools, which is available both as a paid-for and a free version.

Once the disc is in the computer, it works exactly as if you really had the real thing, but with some advantages.

ISO files are accessed by the computer a lot faster than from a disc and because the additional optical drive is not actually being used, your battery will last a little longer too.

You can even put the ISO files on a USB flash disc and it will behave exactly the same as if you really had the CD.

Except of course with a 2GB flash drive, you can fit about three full discs, and you do not have to worry about them getting scratched.

I do not have to carry around the drive unit or the discs, but I still have them all with me. That is why I love ISO files so much.