Virtual DVD/CD writer to emulate a physical writer and writable disk?

Question

A friend had bought a HP dv7 Pavilion, which came with a licensed Windows 7 and its own utility software. It had an option to make a recovery disk which, of course, is quite useful.

Now the problem was that the recovery disk required somewhere around 16GB and which required 4 DVDs. DVD's aren't that portable, are unreliable and a pain to back-up.

So I wanted to a software using which I could emulate a DVD writer and an empty writable DVD so the recovery disk creator would write to.

I tried many different programs, (don't remember the names) but none had this particular feature.

What software should I be using to emulate this?

Answer 1

I just wanted to do the exact same thing (writing a recovery disk to an image file instead of a physical DVD), and looked for a software, and I found one for free which did the job without a problem:

• KernSafe TotalMounter

BTW I have no connection to the company, but I highly recommend this software, because it was very easy to use and did the job.

Here's a short description which I found first:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/totalmounter-free-virtual-cddvd-burner-thats-easy-use.htm

To use TotalMounter as a virtual burner, mount a virtual CD/DVD RW from the Mount menu. Select whether you want to burn a CD image or a DVD image, where the file will be stored and give it a name. Now, the virtual drive is ready as a CD/DVD RW drive. You can then select this drive as the destination drive from your usual burning software and write to it. The data will be saved in an ISO image file.

After installing, you have to wait until the "KernSafe SCSI Controller" driver really gets installed (otherwise you can not mount a new device_{; BTW I covered installing other drivers on the picture which do not belong to this software}):

After running TotalMounter, you have to select Mount > Virtual CD/DVD RW:

In the "Mount Device" window, select DVD, type in an appropriate size:

Device gets mounted:

Select the appropriate device in the recovery management software:

And the writing process was successful for me:

After the writing process, I simply clicked on the device in TotalMounter and unmounted it (there's an Unmount button). (The final result was an iso file with a size of 8.87 GB.)

Answer 2

Virtual CD v10 is quite a good package, with a decent list of features that's not confined to just CD emulation. Virtual CD also allows you to emulate CD/DVD/BD burners, allowing you to burn disks virtually to image files.

You can check out the Trial version of Virtual CD (30 days trial) for your purpose. This can do the job for you, without the need of shelling out any money.

But, if you are willing to buy Virtual CD for US$ 34.95, it will be a nice tool to have in hand. Though its been quite some time since I last used it, it seems to be quite the same powerful tool it was; set at a decent price tag.

Answer 3

Here is another english user guide of Kernsafe TotalMounter for ref. of those interested. http://www.edugeek.net/forums/downloads/94233-totalmounter-free-virtual-cd-dvd-rw-writer-windows.html

Answer 4

If you are willing to pay a sum to get the job done, you can go for Phantom Burner. Phantom Burner costs US$ 29.95.

It can help you to emulate CD-R/DVD+RW/DVD-RAM/BD-RE drives, thus helping you to burn disks to image files; virtually from any application that demands a physically writable drive.

The software also has a trial version. But, its functionality might be a bit too limited, and might not suit your need, as its limits are 50 MB for CD's and 1.4 GB for DVD's. So, in case you are not willing to buy the application, it might not be of use to you.