Windows 7 - OK So I'm Behind the times, CD/DVD Emulation?

Hello, I gotta say, I feel a little late to this technology table, but must say am eager to learn more about exactly what it does and how to best go about setting it up, for example if I had to reinstall the OS, could I have these DVD images on its own separate partition and reintegrate them into the new install once done.

This all came about by reading a blurb about CD DVD emulation and did search here and found many threads, actually too many. Most where of specific questions or advanced setups that at this point don't help me. I have only an idea about what exactly they do.

Its my understanding they create a virtual CD DVD rom drive for the purpose of loading game CD / DVD's to the HD so as not to need the disc to start the game.

Is that the gist of it??? If so, I'm very much interested in them as I'm always searching for the discs when needing them.

Here's some that I've found (some free, others not) ...free is better at this experimental point.

1. Magic Disc
2. DAEMON Tools Lite
3. Magic ISO
4. Virtual CloneDrive

I'm sure theres more but thats a start.

What I need is an understanding about setting up the partitions/HD.
Do I need a partition for each V disc?
Can I make a 100gig partition and load about 6-7 DVD games to it?
Is a new shortcut needed to direct the V disc program to the game .exe?

Any help in this would be greatly appreciated. If theres a tutorial please post link, couldn't find one.

Thanks for reading and any help

To build the image I usually use Imgburn (freeware). You can actually make your own disc structure with it. To mount it, I use Daemon Lite.

You don't need to make new drive for each Virtual Disc. Of course you can make multiple, but what for? One is enough and you can swap the discs at will by using the Virtual Drive manager (e.g Daemon's).

Magic ISO is an amazing program, and totally worth the money.

Magic Disk is their freeware virtual CD/DVD program, it's great too. I prefer two virtual drives, as I prefer two actual drives as well, that way dual disc installation does not require a switching of the mounted disc.

I would recommend Virtual Clone drive for the basic reason that I use it myself.

In the early days of Windows 7 beta and pre beta days there were a lot of issues with virtual CD/DVD drive applications and VCD was the only one I could actually get to work.

I use it regularly for Technet ISOs and it just works.

I accept that the other applications you mention are now working without issues in Windows 7 so why not give them all a try one at a time and pick the one that suits you

you ask about setting up partitions etc - you don't need to any of that at all.

you simple download and install the software, and set an association with iso files.

then, when you double-click on an iso, the emulation software will work its magic, and you will have a new drive (or more if you like) appear in explorer, with all the files loaded up and ready to run, just as if you had inserted a disc - but a lot quicker.

no partitions needed.

once you've finished installing the game from the iso (for example), you can either just leave the iso mounted, so next time you reboot, the virtual drive (and contents) will still be there. or you can choose to unmount it, so explorer just sees an empty drive, or disable the virtual drive altogether.

try it and see - it' sounds much more complicated than it actually is - it's real simple. virtual clone drive is good for beginners, where daemon tools has a few more features for more experienced users.

Thank you every one for the replies and info. Guess I should just dive right in, but one more question.

Lets say a game like Crysis (Awesome in SLI, can't wait for the sequel!) and I want to not need the disk. So I install one of these programs and it creates a virtual ROM drive. But how do I go about converting the game disk and integrate it into the V-ROM?
Is it self explanatory in the v-ROM programs themselves?

Thanks again for the help, this is something I will get done! I hate dealing with CD's, like others have said, ...its just so 90's!

Does every disk need to be converted to an ISO?

I guess many of these questions can get figured out by just loading up one of these V-rom programs and read its Readme/Help, So I'll create an OS Image prior and go to town!
Thanks, -OEM

Two ways basically (and probably more, but these are the two easiest),

1. Use whichever program you decide on and use it to create an ISO of the game disk, then load the ISO when you want to run the game.

2. Make a mini image of the game disk and load it when you want to play the game. This is how to make one for BF2 (and has worked for every other game I have tried it on),

Mini-Image Tutorial

Best option of the two is the second one if for no other reason than that the mini images can be measured in MB (I have mini images for about 12 games and it totals just under 250 MB) instead of GB's that full ISO's can take.

Thats great stormy, I like the idea of just extracting from the disc just what is needed for the game to run. I'll be looking into mini-image tut for sure!

Is mini-image an add-on to one of the other programs, or does it do it all?

-Thnx

Clicked your link and WOW, just what a rookie needs, info/input and understanding!

Awesome!!! Thnx

Wish I could get to work on this right away, but the drive I will want to store the ISO's and/or mini images is being used at this time moving all recorded movies from my dish network HD DVR 612 to the hard drive I will want to use. I'm having to do this because we just got the HD DVR's a few weeks ago and there are known issues with the versions we have and are experiencing problems with them occasionally (Just little voice and video skipping at random times). So once dish ships the new receiver I will move the movies already recorded to the dvr that are now on the HD back to the new receiver freeing up the drive I plan to use. They promised me I will receive the latest version that has the bugs worked out.

What was a little disturbing is these recv. where just installed like 3 weeks ago, ...surely they new what they were giving use, ...glitchy boxes, ...not happy about that, but at least this time around all recorded movies to the VIP612 can be moved to a external usb hd for more storage space. Good news is they will be leaving this active for us at no charge which normally is about $40 (one time fee).

And thats OK, it will give me more time to research this DVD emulation. But everyone thank you for the info and general understanding about how to make it happen. Thanks again!

I'll report back in a few days (depending on how fast dish gets the new HD recv, here) and let you know how I made out when I can re-install the HD back into PC after moving the movies onto the new recv.

I've been preparing the DVD's in ISO form, but some will not allow this to happen.

Are there some disc's/games that will not allow a user to create an ISO from it?

Thanks, ...I have about 8 or so done successfully, but so far 2 games will not show any progress although the light on the DVD ROM continues to flicker as if it is reading it. I'm using Cyberlink Blueray Disk Suite to create the ISO's, but with these troubled disc's it shows no progress and its made both DVD and CD ones already with no issues.

Does it matter that this seems to happen with 2 disc games?

Thnx