I don’t remember when I’ve burned my last CD or DVD. Since I’ve installed Daemon Tools, I think my DVD writer feels lonely and unused. That’s because Daemon Tools takes place of not one, but 4 optical drives. Also, Daemon Tools knows to dodge all kind of protections imposed by the creators of original disks.
What exactly is Daemon Tools? It’s a software that imitates / emulates the functioning of a an CD / DVD optical drive. For example, if you have on your hard disk an image iso, nrg (Nero), cue, isz (Compressed ISO), b5t (made with BlindWrite 5), b6t (with BlindWrite6), bwt (BlindRead), ccd (CloneCD), cdi (DiskJuggler), mds or pdi, Daemon Tools will transform itself into a virtual drive that includes that image. Simply, in Windows you will see that a new drive has appeared – let’s say H – which shows the content of that virtual image, just like you would insert a new CD / DVD. Daemon Tools tricks your operating system to believe that actually there is a new optical drive.
But Daemon Tools can do more than that. Content creators (software kits, movies, music, etc.) protect their original disks with software like SecuROM 7 and SafeDisk 4. Over time there is a continuous struggle between content manufacturers and Daemon Tools. For instance, on installation, some games with installed protection are trying to detect if you are running at that time Daemon Tools and stops the installation or worse, continues with the installation as though nothing happened, but if you try to start the game, nothing happens.
A special issue about this kind of protections has SCSI hard disks, but here too you can go unnoticed if you install YASU, a specially created software for this hard disks that protects Daemon Tools from detection by SecuROM 7 and SafeDisk 4.
To hide from the operating system, Daemon Tools uses rootkit technology, but some antivirus software detects it as being malware.
Daemon Tools is divided into 3 big versions: Daemon Tools Lite, Daemon Tools Pro Standard and Daemon Tools Pro Advanced. Daemon Tools Lite is created for regular users and has limited features. It can create up to 4 virtual drives simultaneously instead of 16 at Pro Standard version and 32 at Pro Advanced, it can’t mount images in folders and neither to convert images like the other two versions does. The main advantage of Daemon Tools Lite is that is free of charge and easy to use.
The latest version of Daemon Tools Lite is v4.35, has 9.15 MB and can be downloaded from here. Be careful – at installation you are asked to restart your system, and afterwards, on return, Daemon Tools asks you if you want to integrate into your browser and to be your new search engine. By default, these boxes are checked so if you are careless and click on Next, you will install also those options.
Daemon Tools Lite starts at system start-up and appears in the bottom bar, in System Tray. To mount a virtual image, right click on that icon, go to Virtual CD/DVD-Rom menu, choose Device 0 and Mount Image. Then you browse on your hard disk for that image and click OK. That’s about it. Sure you can handle it!
