Mount ISO Virtual CD/DVD Image Files With Daemon Tools [Tutorial]

What is Daemon Tools? Daemon Tools is an advanced optical media emulation software. This is
also called a “Virtual” drive. You can use Daemon Tools to create images of all your
physical CD/DVD’s. You then don’t need to physically change the discs when using
different applications. The free version called “Daemon Tools Lite” allows you to emulate
4 drives. Paid for versions allow for more. This version is for personal home use, and
not for commercial purposes. Daemon Tools supports Windows XP, Vista, and 7. Daemon
Tools also supports discs with advanced copy protection like SafeDisc, SecuRom, and LaserLock.
Let’s download and install Daemon Tools. Open a web browser like Internet Explorer.
In the address bar, enter “daemon-tools.cc” and press enter. Click the “Downloads”
link. There are three different versions of daemon tools available. We are going to download
Daemon Tools Lite. Click the “Download” button next to “Daemon Tools Lite”. On
the “Daemon Tools Lite” download page, click the “Download” link. On the “Download
Information Bar”, click the “Run” button. This will download the file and then automatically
start the installer. On the “Daemon Tools Lite” window, on the “Welcome...” screen,
click the “Next” button. On the “License Agreement” screen, read the license agreement,
then click the “I Agree” button. On the “License Type” screen we need to be careful.
They try to trick you into automatically selecting the “Paid License” for Daemon Tools, even
when you download the free version. Click to select the radio button for “Free License”,
then click the “Next” button. On the “Choose Components” screen, ensure that all options
are selected, and click the “Next” button. When asked to install additional software,
click to deselect “I accept...”, and click the “Next” button. On the “Choose Install
Location” screen, click the “Install” button. We left the option selected to install
a Windows Gadget for Daemon Tools. Click the “Install” button. On the “Completing...”
screen, there is an option selected by default to send anonymouse usage statistics”. This
will send basic usage statistics to the makers of Daemon Tools so they can improve the product.
You can deselect this if you like. Deselect “Run Daemon Tools Lite”, and click the
“Finish” button. You can start Daemon Tools in one of two ways. Option one. Double-click
the “Daemon Tools Lite” icon on the desktop. Option two. Click the Windows “Start”
button, “All Programs”, “Daemon Tools Lite”, then select “Daemon Tools Lite”.
Let’s review the basic Daemon Tools Lite interface. The top pane in the window will
list the Daemon Tools image catalog, which is currently empty. All options are on the
toolbar in the middle of the window, Several are greyed out. “Add Image”. This button
is used to add a new disc image to Daemon Tools to use as a new virtual drive. Let’s
click the “Add Image” button. Browse for the image file you want to open. Click to
select the file, and then click the “Open” button. We will now see that we have the new
image file listed in the “Image Catalog”. This has not mounted the image in the virtual
drive, it is just listed in the image catalog for quick access. To mount the image file
to the virtual drive listed below, you can do one of two things. Option one. Right-click
on the image in the library, “Mount”, and then click to select the virtual drive
you want the image mounted to. There is only one virtual drive on this system currently,
which is why there is only one choice. Option two. You can drag and drop the image onto
the virtual drive below. We can now see that the virtual drive shows as having media in
it. “Add DT Virtual Drive”. Click this button to add additional virtual CD/DVD drives
to the system. With the free Daemon Tools Lite you can use up to four virtual drives.
Let’s add an additional virtual drive. “Add SCSI Virtual Drive”. This will add additional virtual
SCSI devices to the system. “Make Disc Image”. Clicking this button will open the “Disc
Imaging” window. “Device”. Click the drop down to select which device in your system
it will use as the source device. “Reading Speed”. Here you select the speed the disc
will be read at. Typically you would just use the highest setting. If you have errors
or it fails when trying to create the image, you can try to drop this down to a lower setting.
“Destination image file:”. Click the “Save as” button to select the location to save
the image file. I’ll select the desktop. Clicking the “Save as type:” drop down
you can select which format you want to save the image as. I like to use “ISO” images.
We’ll select “ISO”, and click the “Save” button. Below you can select options to “Delete
image on failure”, and “Add to image Catalog”. Click the “Start” button. You can burn
images from Daemon Tools using the “Burn image with Astroburn” button. We may go
over this at a later time, because it requires installing another piece of software. The
preferences button will open a new preferences window with base settings for the Daemon Tools.I
want go over a couple of the preferences. Lets click the “Preferences” buttton.
On the “Preferences” window, on the “General” settings, by default we should have all options
checked. “Use tray agent”, and “Autostart”, tells Daemon Tools to start with Windows every
time, and load directly to the system tray. “Automount” will automatically mount the
last image mounted to each drive when it automatically load with Windows. If you have image files
that aren’t opening to Daemon Tools when you double-click them, you can go to the “Integration”
menu, and then select additional file formats. If you have a disc with advanced protection,
you can go to the “Advanced” menu, and then select the type of security you want
to enable support for. Let’s close out the “Preferences” window by clicking the “Close”
button. As you add images to Daemon Tools it will keep a list of the “Recently Used
Images”. Let’s close out the “Daemon Tools” window. Notice that even when you
click the “X” to close out the window, it will still show to be running in the system
tray. If you don’t see the icon for “Daemon Tools” in the system tray. Click the “Show
Hidden Icons” button. Click the “Customize” link. On the “Notification Area Icons”
window that opens, find “Daemon Tools Lite” in the list. Click the drop down menu, and
select “Show icon and notifications”. Click the “OK” button. Let’s review
how to add images to the virtual disc drive, and how to remove them. Previously we added
a image to the drive by dragging and dropping the image file onto the drive. Let’s remove
it from the drive by “Unmounting” it. To unmount the image, left click once on the
Daemon Tools icon in the system tray Here at the bottom we can see the virtual drive
listed with the virtual disc image mounted. Click the “Unmount All Drives” link. On
the confirmation window, click the “Yes” button. If we click on it again, we can see
it shows “No Media” next to the virtual drive. Now we can click on the Daemon Tools
icon in the system tray and click the link for the virtual drive to mount an image. We
would then browse for and select an image file. Once selected click the “Open” button.
The virtual disc drive will show up in your computer settings. Let’s click the Windows
“Start” button, and then select “Computer”. The “Computer” window will open showing
all the hard drives, disc drives, and other storage devices in the system. Here we can
see our virtual drive with the disc image mounted. Let’s double click to
open the virtual drive. Here we can browse around the disc use it just like any normal
physical disc drive. In addition to being able to connect to a virtual disc image from
the Daemon Tools icon in the system tray, you can also mount the image directly from
windows explorer. I’ll browse to a ISO image file on my system. When you install Daemon
Tools it should associate disc image files with Daemon Tools. If we look at this ISO
file here, we can see a Daemon Tools icon showing. This shows that Daemon Tools will
be the default program to open the file. If you have this you can simply double-click
on the file to mount it to Daemon Tools. If you don’t see the “Daemon Tools” icon,
we need to set it as the default application. Right-click on the ISO image, “Open With”,
and select “Choose default program...”. On the “Open with” window, select “Daemon
Tools” if you see it in the list. If you don’t see it in the list, click the “Browse”
button. Brose to “C:\Program Files (x86)\DAEMON Tools Lite\”, select “DTLite.exe”, and
click the “Open” button. Click the “OK” button. You will see it then mount the image
file. Now every time want to mount an ISO image you just need to double-click on it.
You should now have “Daemon Tools Lite” downloaded and installed, as well as have
a good understanding of how to use it to mount and unmount image files to virtual CD/DVD
drives.