VirtualDrive Alternatives
VirtualDrive is described as 'FarStone CD/DVD emulators are the perfect CD management solution for families with small children, gamers on the go, small businesses with disc-based programs, and schools with disc-based educational material'. There are more than 25 alternatives to VirtualDrive for Windows, Linux, BSD, Mac and PortableApps.com. The best alternative is WinCDEmu, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like VirtualDrive are DAEMON Tools (Freemium), Virtual CloneDrive (Free), UltraISO (Paid) and ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver (Free, Open Source).
- WinCDEmu is an open-source CD/DVD/BD emulator - a tool that allows you to mount optical disc images by simply clicking on them in Windows Explorer. If you have downloaded an ISO image and want to use it without burning it to a blank disc, WinCDEmu is the easiest way to do it.
- Free • Open Source
- Windows
- PortableApps.com
- DAEMON Tools Lite is an advanced application which provides one of the best optical media emulation in the industry. You can mount *.mdx, *.mds/*.mdf, *.iso, *.b5t, *.b6t, *.bwt, *.ccd, *.cdi, *.cue, *.nrg, *.pdi, *.isz disc images to a virtual drive. Make .iso, *.mds/*.
Bundleware
Lite installer contains ads.
- Virtual CloneDrive works and behaves just like a physical CD/DVD drive, however it exists only virtually. Image files of various formats (.iso, .
- CD image files are easily created with UltraISO. Duplicate discs to a CD image, create bootable CDs and audio CD images - and UltraISO also handles DVD image files. If you need to know how to make a CD image or need to edit an ISO image file, UltraISO is the tool you need.
- ImDisk is a virtual disk driver for Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista/7/8/8.1 or Windows Server 2003/2008/2012. It can create virtual hard disk, RAM Disk, floppy or CD/DVD drives using image files or system memory. The install package installs a console-mode control program called imdisk.
- Free • Open Source
- Windows
- BSD
- Alcohol is a powerful Windows CD and DVD burning software that makes it easy to create backups of DVDs* and CDs. In addition, the program lets you store your most used CDs as images on your computer, so you can call them up at the click of a button.
Bundleware
The free version of Alcohol 52% contains an optional adware toolbar bundled. It also installs Smart File Advisor without allowing you to uncheck this option during setup.
- PowerISO is a powerful CD/DVD image file processing tool, which allows you to open, extract, create, edit, compress, encrypt, split and convert ISO files, and mount these files with internal virtual drive. It can process almost all CD-ROM image files including ISO and BIN.
- Paid • Proprietary
- Windows
Bundleware
The installer contains ads. Be careful during the installation: Forum
- This all-in-one package includes the ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver and several tools and interfaces to mount many formats of image files and make a RamDisk available at Windows startup.
- MagicISO is a powerful CD/DVD image file creating/editing/extracting tool. It can open / create / edit /extract CD/DVD image files, and it can convert bin to iso and back, as well as make ISO file from DVD/CD-ROM or hard disk, and handle bootable information at meanwhile.
Discontinued
The program is no longer updated. Last version, 5.5(build 281), released in February 2010, can be still downloaded from the official website.
- CDEmu is a CD/DVD-ROM device emulator for linux, licensed under GPL v2 or later. It is a from-scratch rewrite of the legacy CDEmu project, which was started by Robert Penz.
- Free • Open Source
- Linux
- BSD