Keep your favorite CD's handy
- make virtual CD drives on your PCA virtual CD is a copy of a CD that is
actually on your hard drive but looks like it's in an extra CD ROM reader.
If you learn how to create a virtual CD drive, you won't have to switch
CD's in and out of you CD tray nearly as often. The virtual drive will
also run faster than a real CD drive because your hard disk can read the
information faster. That could make a difference on a graphics intensive
game.
Below are links to two programs that I've
reviewed. These two will allow you to create virtual drives on your PC's
hard drive.
Creating a virtual drive is easy once you
figure it out. First you put the original CD in your CD ROM tray. Then you
make a copy of the CD called an ISO file using software like the LC ISO
Creator. Once you have the Virtual CloneDrive software installed, you can
right click on the ISO file and turn it into a virtual CD. It looks and
acts like a new CD ROM reader on your system and will have it's own drive
letter. You can take out the original CD because now you have a permanent
copy of it on your hard drive and you can run the virtual CD just like it
was a real CD.
If you still aren't clear about what's going
on with this stuff, check out the article at PC World below called CD
and DVD images.