Physical media discs day by day are becoming more obsolete, they do not last for a long time, they get scratched, you can lose them easily, and if you are a tech enthusiast just like I’m, and you like to play with new software, you know what a waste it is to burn a CD today and tomorrow you need to download and burn a new copy.
I think that it is easier and more practical to backup those important discs into a hard driver with a good image file format like for example .ISO, but the problem comes when you need to install or reinstall a program and you don’t have a physical disc.
How do you solve this problem without wasting anymore discs? Well, you will have to mount the image file to access the installation. Now, there are many softwares that you can use and that allows you to mount a CD/DVD image into a virtual CD/DVD drive, most of them cost money and some are free but they are not very good, so here is where WinCDEmu from SysProgs.org comes in.
WinCDEmu is a free open-source really lightweight software for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7, that allows you to mount an image file by just double-clicking the file or by right-clicking and select Select drive letter & mount.
And these are the additional settings that you can configure after to select Select drive letter & mount:
To unmount just double-click once again in the image file or go to Computer, right-click the virtual drive where you have mounted the image file and simply select Eject.
WinCDEmu features
- Really simple image mounting and unmounting, just double-click an image file and WinCDEmu will do the rest.
- You can mount as many images as you want!
- You don’t need to reserve any drive letters when nothing is mounted.
- WinCDEmu support many image file formats: ISO, CUE, NRG, MDS/MDF, IMG, CCD.
- All the image mounting formats are supported on Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7.
- WinCDEmu is a lightweight software.
- WinCDEmu has translation for English, Russian, Japanese, Italian, French, German, Greek, Romanian, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch and Traditional Chinese languages.
- And the best of all, it is FREE!
To wrap-up, WinCDEmu (virtual CD/DVD-ROM) is a great tool that gets the job done, it uses almost non of the computer resources, it will not slowdown your computer boot up time, and nothing needs to load at the start-up. I know there are many tools out there and they even offer more features, but if you just need to mount an image file, you don’t need more of what this little program can offer.
- You can download WinCDEmu here.
Mauro Huculak is a Windows How-To Expert who started Pureinfotech in 2010 as an independent online publication. He has also been a Windows Central contributor for nearly a decade. Mauro has over 15 years of experience writing comprehensive guides and creating professional videos about Windows and software, including Android and Linux. Before becoming a technology writer, he was an IT administrator for seven years. In total, Mauro has over 21 years of combined experience in technology. Throughout his career, he achieved different professional certifications from Microsoft (MSCA), Cisco (CCNP), VMware (VCP), and CompTIA (A+ and Network+), and he has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP for many years. You can follow him on X (Twitter), YouTube, LinkedIn and About.me. Email him at [email protected].