VirtualCloneDrive

There are some scenarios in which a virtual drive is necessary. First, consider that some devices, like tablets and notebooks, don’t have built-in disc drives.

Second, it is usually more convenient to store digital images instead of the physical discs; this way, you can avoid scratches and taking the discs with you. To help you do this, there’s Virtual CloneDrive, a lightweight program than can emulate a physical CD/DVD drive. When using this application, you can hardly notice it’s not the real disc you’re playing but its image. Luckily, the program supports various disc image formats.

Using the application is quite easy. Probably, the simplest way is to associate the program with common image extensions. Thus, with a click, the application will mount the image. Moreover, you can set it to automatically mount the last image. If you need to customize the settings, you can click on the program’s icon in the System Tray. As you will see then, this utility allows creating up to 15 virtual drives. Besides, it can keep a history of recently mounted images. It also lets you unmount an image file when you eject the drive.

In general, this is a fine but very limited tool. However, you should be aware that this application is perfectly complemented with CloneDVD and CloneCD, two utilities by the same developer, which can make image files of your discs.