CDROnce broadband Internet became common place, it was only a matter of time before people started to place the entire contents of CD-ROMs on the Internet for download. This way, software developers and manufacturers would not have to burn and mail all those CDs. The ISO was born.

But, this meant that you would have to burn your own at your cost. If you were planning to use the CD later or needed it for some project, this was fine. But what if you wanted to just see what is available in the ISO? Or you just needed to get one file from the ISO file? Is this worth the cost and effort of burning a CD (or, for that matter, a DVD)?

Luckily, there are a few ways that you can access the contests of the ISO files without burning disks to just throw them away later.

Method 1: ISO Extractors

If you just want to get access to the contents of the ISO file and get a few of the files, an ISO extractor is a great way to go. ISO extractors work with ISO files much the same way that WinZip deals with ZIP files. You can look at the contents of the ISO file and then extract the files that you want to use.

Some freeware/open source ISO extractors:

Method 2: Virtual CD/DVD Drives

Sometimes, you need to have access to the complete contents of the ISO file, such as when you are testing a new CD compilation or an autorun setup. This is where a virtual CD/DVD drive really comes in handy.

The way these tools work is to install a special software driver on your computer that creates one or more virtual drives that you will find under My Computer on your system. You can then direct the software to mount an ISO file on this virtual drive so that it appears as if it were a CD or DVD right in your computer.

Some freeware/open source virtual CD/DVD drives include:

Note: I have not included Daemon Tools or Alcohol 52% because the setup program will install, by default, some application(s) which I consider to be spyware/malware. This does not mean that these are not good products. Rather, I just choose to install software that does not come with spyware/malware.

Method 3: Virtual Computer

Sometimes, you need to have full and complete access to the contents of the ISO file. The ISO file needs to look and act like an actual bootable CD with complete access to a system and all of its components. A good example of such a scenario is when you are creating a Live CD.

This is when I generally pull out the big guns and create a virtual computer with the freeware VMWare server. I then create a virtual machine that will boot from my ISO file. This then lets me see exactly how the ISO will work in a real computer.

This is not the only virtual server software that you can use.  You might also like to try:

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Tim Fehlman