by David Hakala
DAEMON Tools is a Windows software suite that makes files that are exact images of CD and DVD discs. You can store these disc images on your hard drive and use them exactly as if they were physical discs in your CD/DVD drive. You can also burn disc images to CD or DVD discs as backups, or even transfer disc images over the Internet.
A disc image on a hard drive works much faster than a CD or DVD drive because the rate at which data is transferred from hard drive to RAM is about faster 50 times faster than the data transfer rate from CD/DVD drives. You also don’t need those shiny discs or a thing in which to carry them around.
DAEMON Tools claims to be able to defeat copy-protection schemes often found on CDs and DVDs, including SafeDisc and SecureROM. This is legal so long as your purpose is to make backup copies of discs you have purchased legally. It is not legal for rented or pirated discs.
You do need a pretty big hard drive, of course. But I just bought a 320 GB, very fast 7200 rpm laptop hard drive for a mere $90 delivered, and laptop drives are more expensive than larger tower-case drives. That will hold an awful lot of disc images! A standard CD disc holds up to 800 MB of data, while a DVD or Blu-ray disc may hold up to 4 GB of data.
DAEMON Tools enables your computer to act as if it had up to 32 SCSI drives and two IDE drives attached to it at once. You can also burn images to physical CD or DVD discs.
DAEMON Tools comes in several versions of different capabilities. You can download trial versions of each to see which meets your needs. After 20 days, a trial version will cease working until you pay a registration fee. DAEMON Tools Pro, the most popular version costs $27.
David Hakala has perpetrated technology tutorials since 1988 in addition to committing tech journalism, documentation, Web sites, marketing collateral, and profitable prose in general. His complete rap sheet can be seen at http://www.linkedin.com/in/dhakala