Managing optical disks is a pain, period. So, people started looking at Virtual disc drives as a convenient alternative. After all who wouldn’t want to play their games without any annoying interruptions.

Daemon tools is one of the strongest contenders and has been around for a few years now. Join me after the jump to find out why it’s so popular.

What is a Disk Emulator?

A disk emulator is a software which lets you create a replica of your CD/DVD and store it directly in your hard drive rather than having to repeatedly access the disk.

This process is called as disk imaging. Usually this is coupled with a virtual drive to mount these images. The logic is to protect your disks from constant wear and tear and manage your various DVD’s right from your PC.

Daemon Tools

Daemon or Disk And Execution MONitor is a virtual drive and disk authoring tool for PC. It lets you clone your discs easily and mount it in a virtual SCSI drive created.

Daemon tools is capable of defeating most of the copy protection mechanisms, especially used while imaging original games. It supports a wide array of file formats including ISO, MDS, MDX and MDF.

Getting Started

Attack of the clones

Once you’re done with the painful installation(rebooting after install, not so cool), it’s pretty straight forward.

One handy feature that grabbed my attention is their pretty nifty image scanner. You can simply scan your hard drive for existing images and add them to your files.

Virtual Drives

Choose your lucky number

I’ve my disc image ready, but how do I read them? The disc image is just a clone of your disc. You still need a drive to read them, in this case a Virtual drive.

With the help of the Virtual Device Manager you can easily set up your drive. Daemon supports DT adapter, IDE Adapter, and SCSI Adapter. I’ll let you google the difference. Once your virtual drive is set up, you can mount your images and access them.

Managing Images

Manage images

Daemon allows you to create custom images from your system files. It also allows you to make changes to your images.

Another impressive feature is the ability to protect images with password and split files. You can also convert your image to any other format you want. You probably will never use this, but you can burn your images directly from Daemon tools.

Usability

Clean UI

Daemon tools sports a minimalistic interface. All the options are available right on the top. The file list is displayed beautifully on the right pane.

If you need to view the description of any file you can pull up the MountSpace panel just by clicking the farther end on right side. The UI is very simple and doesn’t take much time for the users to grasp.

Privacy Concerns

Wrong move

MountSpace is a service that keeps a tab on the stuff you mount with Daemon tools. They publish the user’s IP address along with the file details they just mounted.

On paper, users have the option to block Daemon from collecting any information, but it didn’t seem to work. It created a huge uproar among the community and forced Daemon tools to update their privacy policy.

Pricing and Support

No, we don't sell candy

Daemon tools was a freeware until sometime back, but not anymore. The lite version comes around $20, Pro Standard costs $35 and the Pro advanced will see you pay $45.

They’ve a pretty decent FAQ section and the community is largely friendly. With lifetime free upgrade, I’d happily settle with the Pro Standard version.

Wrapping Up

Daemon tools is an awesome service that helps you in managing you optical disks. It’s sad to see such a wonderful software being associated with software piracy. I’d encourage this to anyone looking for a decent disk authorization software.

Share your experience with Daemon tools with our readers in the discussion below. Thanks for reading.