Software CDs and DVDs are just heavy and prone to getting lost. Instead of having all your CDs lying around, you can store them in a box in the attic, but before doing that, you should make a copy to have on your hard-drive. With this method you'll always have the installer at hand, ready to use without having to look for it.

In order to make copies of software DVDs you'll need to create an image of the CD.

ISO creator

An ISO image is an archive file of an optical disc, composed of the data contents of every written sector for an optical disc. It’s possible to have an ISO image from a CD, a DVD and even a Blu-Ray Disc. There are other formats like bin and img, according to the OS you use.

There are different programs that can create these images, here are some of the best programs with these capabilities:

• DAEMON Tools: Although only the simplest version is free, this is a good program that can create/mount files, although recently the program is been heavy on the ads.
• ImgBurn: This program not only creates images from any kind of disks, but it lets you also burn copies of those same CDs
• MagicISO is a powerful program for creating/editing/extracting CDs/DVDs. It can open / create / edit /extract image files, and it can convert bin to iso and back.  It also makes ISO files from DVD/CD-ROM or hard disks, and handles bootable information.
• LC ISO Creator: Is probably the simplest of the programs to create ISO image files. It doesn't have any bells, whistles or shiny icons, but it works fine.

ISO Mount

Once you have your ISO images created, you can mount them to Virtual CDs, it will appear like your computer has extra CD drives. You can slide in any of your ISO images and use them as if they were the original CD’s.

• Alcohol 52% is the free copy of Alcohol 120%. The main difference is that Alchol 52% is just a good CD and DVD emulator. The premium app supports up to 31 simultaneous virtual drives and is optimized for speedy playback.
• Virtual CloneDrive is a free program that supports up to 8 simultaneous virtual drives and supports common image formats such as ISO, BIN, and CCD. Once installed VCD integrates with your Windows shell, so mounting an image file is as simple as double-clicking on the file.
• ImDisk is probably the smallest program with 300 kb. With this program you just click on the ISO and it will automatically mount it. It also has a nice command line syntax, but you can use it directly in the Control Panel. No reboot is required for installing or uninstalling.
• Phantom CD is a virtual CD/DVD/Blu-ray emulator. The virtual copies will play much more faster than the physical discs

Other Applications

• Ukoo ISO Maker: This program can take any number of files or directories and create an ISO image then it can burn the ISO image into a CD/DVD-R disc.
• Dvdisaster: Dvdisaster can create images and store the data on CD/DVD/BD. The program’s specialty is the ability to store files in a way that is fully recoverable even after some read errors have developed. This enables you to rescue complete data to export to a new medium.
• 7Zip: This is one of the programs you may already have in your computer. Did you know that this program can extract the information stored inside an ISO image without the need to mount the file?
• AnyToISO: This is a nice application to transform one of the multiple formats of Disc images into the ISO standard, so you will be able to easily burn the images onto a CD.

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