Today, many of the software packages are available to be downloaded in form of ISO images, for example, Microsoft service packs, Microsoft Visual Studio Express, Linux distributions, free computer games etc. After downloading these ISO images, you are required to burn them to blank CD/DVD media and only then you can use them. But why go through all this rigmarole when you can directly access the ISO images through a virtual CD/DVD drive like ImDisk. ImDisk is a free virtual disk driver for Windows that allows you to mount all types of disk images in Windows, including ISO, NRG, VHD, IMA, IMG, BIN and many more.
You can download ImDisk from the LTRData website. The download is a very small installer package that installs a command line tool imdisk.exe and a Control Panel shortcut in Windows. But you do not have to use the command line tool. All you have to do is right-click on any of the supported disk images and select Mount as ImDisk Virtual Disk as shown in the following snapshot:
This would result in the options window being opened. Here you can select the image type, device type, virtual disk drive letter to be assigned, how the disk access is managed (direct access, through physical memory or through virtual memory) and whether the media is to be loaded as removable media and read-only media. Clicking OK in this options window will result in that image to be loaded in your computer and you can access just like any other media.
Once you are done using the loaded media, you would want to remove it from the system. Because the disk image is loaded in a virtual drive, you cannot simply eject it and be done with. To unload the media, you can right-click on it in the Computer and select Unmount ImDisk Virtual Disk as shown.
So if you do not want to burn the disk images unnecessarily on blank CD/DVD disks, then you can make use of the ImDIsk Virtual Disk software. It saves your time that you would have been wasted in burning the images to blank media (it takes 5-6 minutes at the minimum) and it also saves your money which could have been squandered on the blank CD/DVD media.
You can download ImDisk Virtual Disk from http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html/#ImDisk.