Daemon Tools is a free, Windows based disk image emulator software allowing users to directly load an image file onto your computer system from any CD/DVD source under any type of copy protection. Once an image or emulation of a CD/DVD is created you can mount the image on one of the virtual drives and explore the content as if from a CD source, only quicker.

Early versions of Daemon Tools came with support for mounting already created images with advances later on to support full capabilities for creating images in a number of different formats. Further updates included support for compressed and encrypted image formats and capabilities to evade the majority of copy-protection systems around. Later version worked on the GUI to make mounting images easier for beginners and added support CD/DVD/Blu-ray imaging ability with an increase in the number virtual drives with a maximum of 32.

Daemon Tools 3.47 is last version to support Windows 98.

Daemon Tools 4.36 last to support Windows 2000. Daemon Tools later than version 4.36 supports Windows XP/Vista/7. Daemon Tools has a good reputation for stability with the most preferred version being 4.0.

Pros: Easily mount images to virtual drives, support for many format types, light on PC resources.

Cons: Need to reboot after install, ad-ware bundled with version 4.0+, difficult to uninstall.