If you download a lot of software (legally, mind you) sometimes they will come in the form of an ISO file which is basically an image of an optical disc (be it a CD, DVD or Blu-ray disc). Normally, these files had to be burnt to a physical disc before you could actually start installing the software. However, these days with huge hard drives and a slow shift away from optical media many people opt not to burn ISO files to disc and instead mount them as a virtual optical drive in the computer.
One such way of doing this is using a neat little tool called MagicDisc.
What I like about this piece of software is that it is small (1.3MB download), it installs in under a minute and you don’t have to reboot in order to get it working. Furthermore, reading from an ISO file can often be many times faster than reading from a physical disc meaning you get your software installed faster.
Mounting an ISO is an incredibly easy exercise which you can complete as follows:
- Right click the MagicDisc icon in the system tray,
- Click on “Virtual CD/DVD-ROM”,
- Click on the first drive in the list,
- Click on “Mount”,
- Browse to your ISO file and click “Open”.
Your ISO file will now show up in Windows as a regular optical drive which can be used and accessed as normal. When you have finished, you’ll need to unmount the file (similar to ejecting the disc) by following the above steps again but choose “Unmount” instead of “Mount”.
It’s also worth nothing that MagicDisk supports more than just ISO files including (but not limited to):
- BIN (CDRWin),
- IMG/CCD (CloneCD),
- NRG (Nero).
If you need more than one virtual optical drive you can also add more by right clicking the MagicDisc icon in the system tray and choosing the appropriate option under the “Set Number of Drives” item in the list.
I also acknowledge that there are other alternatives such as Alcohol 120% (which I own) but this requires a reboot to install plus you also need to fork out some cash for it as well. Furthermore, certain games also search for the more popular disc emulation software and may refuse to load if detected.
At any rate, you might not need it right away but MagicDisc is tiny, simple, free and available for 32-bit Windows 98 and later and 64-bit Windows XP and later.
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