DAEMON Tools is disc imaging and virtual drive software for Windows. Its Lite edition opens disc images as mounted drives, creates image files from physical discs and keeps a catalog of images for later use. This lets software access the contents of a saved disc through a virtual device instead of requiring that disc in an optical drive.
DAEMON Tools Lite provides basic mounting and disc capture free with advertising and partner offers. Additional tools are sold in separate feature groups, including image editing, disc burning and virtual hard disk creation. Removing advertising requires a paid license, which is separate from the purchases that unlock additional functions.
Mounting images with DAEMON Tools Lite
Selecting an image through Quick Mount creates the virtual device needed to open it. Images can also be mounted from the catalog, dragged into the drive area or opened through an associated file type in Explorer. Supported disc formats include ISO, MDX, MDS, CUE, NRG and CCD, so the mounting function extends beyond standard ISO files.
The basic edition supports up to four virtual devices simultaneously. An optional device expansion increases the available number, with limits that depend on the emulated drive type. The Automount preference can restore mounted images after a restart.
The Images catalog collects files added manually, found through a PC scan or created in DAEMON Tools Lite. Its search and detail views help locate a particular image, while each entry offers mounting and access to the folder containing the actual file.
Disc capture
To preserve a physical disc as an image, DAEMON Tools Lite reads a selected optical drive and writes an ISO, MDX or MDS/MDF file to the chosen destination. Its image creation tools include compression and password protection options. The resulting image can be kept in the catalog and mounted later.
The paid Image Editor group adds control over the capture process. These settings include reading speed, splitting the image into volumes and choosing how many times to retry a bad block. Options for skipping or recording bad blocks control how capture handles unreadable areas; they do not restore the missing information.
Image Editor tools
Image Editor also creates a data image from selected files and folders, rather than requiring an existing physical disc. For audio material, separate music tracks can be assembled into an Audio CD image.
Existing images can be edited or converted, with MDS, MDX and ISO among the output choices. Conversion can put an image into a format that supports the compression or volume-splitting operation needed for storage. These creation, editing and conversion tools belong to the paid feature group rather than the free mounting function.
Disc Burn and Virtual Burner
The optional Disc Burn group writes an image to optical media or builds a data disc from files and folders. It also creates Audio CDs, copies a physical disc to another disc and erases rewritable media with quick or full erase choices.
DAEMON Tools Lite has a separate Virtual Burner feature for applications that expect to write to a CD or DVD drive. It presents a writable virtual device to the burning application and saves the result as MDX or MDS/MDF. This allows a disc-writing workflow to produce an image file for inspection or later use without consuming a physical blank disc.
Virtual HDD, RAM disks and TrueCrypt containers
The paid Virtual HDD tools create a virtual hard disk in a file. Users choose its capacity and either fixed allocation or a dynamic disk that grows as data is saved. A dynamic disk does not automatically shrink when its contents are deleted. Further controls set the filesystem, volume label and whether the mounted disk appears as fixed or removable storage.
The same tool group can allocate part of RAM as a storage disk and create a TrueCrypt container for password-protected file storage.
Bootable USB
The Bootable USB feature writes a bootable Windows or Linux image to a selected USB drive. Boot choices include GPT with UEFI and MBR with BIOS or UEFI, allowing the output to match the intended machine’s startup method. A DD mode also writes images for media such as Raspberry Pi SD cards. This is a paid image-writing tool in DAEMON Tools Lite.
Connecting to iSCSI targets
With the paid iSCSI Initiator, DAEMON Tools Lite can connect to storage made available by an iSCSI server. After a server is added by name or IP address, its targets can be listed and connected. A connected target is used like a local device, extending access to shared images, virtual hard disks and physical devices such as optical drives or USB storage.
Catch! file sharing
Catch! exchanges files between participating devices on the same local network. Companion mobile apps extend this to Android and iOS devices. The paid Catch! group adds browsing of shared content and Android backup tasks. Available content differs by device: Android storage can expose files and folders, while iOS access covers photos, videos and previously received files.
