WinCDEmu

The main purpose of this blog is to have solutions to various computer problems I come across written down so that I know what to do if the same problem happens again. Deciding which software to use for certain tasks can also be thought as a problem and I come across this problem pretty often. After a long period of trial and error, I find the best software for the task at hand and later, after a clean install of Windows, I forget which program I like the best and have to start over from scratch. To avoid this in the future, I have decided to write about the programs I use for whatever purposes. WinCDEmu is one of those programs, which is used to mount images files so that the need to write images back to a disk is eliminated.

For those of you who are not familiar with the idea, it is possible to create snapshots of CDs, DVDs and Blu Ray discs to store in a hard drive or transfer over internet. This is different than simply copying the files onto your hard drive because there may be additional information on optical disks, especially if the disk is bootable. With a disk image, you get an exact copy of the disk from which the image was created. It is the next best thing to having the original disk in your hand.

WinCDEmu is an open-source software which supports mounting of all the major disk image formats, including iso, cue/bin, nrg, mds/mdf, ccd and img. It is really easy to use, simply right click on an image file in Windows Explorer and choose the "Select drive letter & mount" option:

All you have to do after that is to select a letter for your drive and click "OK":

The program is also capable of creating iso images of disks. To do this, right click on the disk in Windows Explorer and choose "Create ISO image" option:

All you have to do is give a name to the image file and choose a location for this file:

The program will then move on to create the image file:

WinCDEmu can be downloaded for free from http://wincdemu.sysprogs.org/.