mounting/de-mounting isos and stuff?

Post Reply New Topic

um, I'm fairly new to this whole ISO stuff. I downloaded something (relax, it's freeware) that's an ISO but it doesn't give instructions on how to unpack it and run it.

Okay, it's an ISO. It it UNmounted? Do I need to mount it? How do I do this?

See, I thought an ISO was just another kind of zip file so I tried unzipping it. Yeah, that didn't work.

I don't know the specifics, but I do know how to turn it into a usable product. Just use a program like Nero or Roxio, and use their "Burn Image To Disc" function to put it on to a DVD-R/W or CD-R/W, depending on the file size.

DAEMON Tools is pretty popular, but I'm sure there's other software out there that does the same thing if you don't like it.

Here's the download page: [LINK]

There's four items on that page. The first is DAEMON Tools Pro Advanced Evaluation, the second is DAEMON Tools Pro Standard Evaluation, the third is DAEMON Tools Lite, and the last one is DAEMON Tools toolbar. If you're not gonna buy it, just download the third one. It should be able to do everthing you need. The first two are just 20 day evaluation versions that come with all the bells and whistles. And that last thing is just a web search tool.

Once you get it installed, there will be an icon in your taskbar that looks like a purple bolt of lightning. To mount an ISO image, right click the icon and go to Virtual CD/DVD-ROM, highlight one of the virtual devices (you can set up to 4 of these), and click "Mount image." A browsing window will pop up, and then all you gotta do is find and select the ISO file.

You can open an ISO volume with WinRar, and pull all the files in a new folder. --This is what id did with the version of Linux that I currently dual boot with.

To burn it to a disk copy all the stuff you have in the folder that you've created to your optical drive, or extract directly to your optical drive.

and that's another thing that's confusing me. Virtual drives?

wha?

virtual drives make your life easier. You can mount an ISO file to a virtual drive (fake dvd drive).

In reality, you'd have to 1) get blank dvd/cd 2) burn the iso 3) load it into the drive 4) access information all without any scratches or drive problems or whatever. Just click on iso file and mount into virtual drive, easy peasy.

Just be aware that a lot of games don't like virtual drives. Some bluntly equate DAEMON Tools and Alcohol to piracy and simply refuse to run if any one is installed. So keep that in mind if you do play modern games.