Virtual Drive For Mac

Virtual drive for mac free download - Paragon NTFS for Mac, Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac 7.0.3 Update, Parallels Desktop for Mac, and many more programs. WinISO Virtual Drive – a tool for mounting disc images onto your PC. Virtual Drive is a virtual CD/DVD/Blu-ray emulator which can create disc images and do as the real drive did. It can back up the disc images in your hard disk when you need to use this file, just click the drive icon on your PC. How to make a virtual drive under Linux. Linux is a special operating system; but as Mac OS X, Linux is able to turn ISO image to a virtual drive natively. Switch to root user with following command, if not login as a root user: $ su - 2. Type in the command line below to create a directory to mount the ISO: # mkdir –p /mnt/disk. Download Remote Drive for Mac - Pro and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. ‎Turn your iPhone or iPad into the wireless flash drive for your Mac. Have full access to your Mac files – use your iOS device to stream videos, view photos and documents, from anywhere within your home.

• Virtual Drive Windows 10
• Virtual Drive For Mac

First, we'll go through what we're talking about when we refer to virtual hard drives. And one important point: The terms 'virtual drives,' 'virtual disks' and 'virtual machines' can sometimes be thrown around interchangeably.

Sometimes, a 'virtual hard drive' (and all its vocabulary variations) has less to do with a storage server and way more to do with an operating system. Say you had a Mac and needed to run a Windows application (not a far-out option if you had a Mac at home and Windows at work, for instance). By downloading virtual drive software (or using a native program, if your operating system offers it), you basically trick the computer into thinking there's a whole other drive on it. From that drive, you can work with different operating systems. That's not all -- these kinds of virtual drives will also let you encrypt files for extra security and might even allow you to create a file of a CD or DVD so you don't have to physically have the disk in your computer. They can do so much, in fact, that we can't cover all the uses here. Instead, let's just plow ahead to our virtual drive-as cloud storage.

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As we saw from the evolution of the hard drive (and external hard drive), we can pretty confidently predict that digital storage space -- and the high demand for it -- is going to keep growing. Think about this: The average storage for a floppy disk was about 1.44 MB. SkyDrive, a virtual hard drive offered by Microsoft, gives away 7GB of storage free and clear. This means you'd have to have roughly 10,000 floppy disks on you to access all your data at any given time.

Creating a robust, intelligent virtual hard drive has become big business. Because after you use up your 7GB, Microsoft (and any other cloud storage server) is going to politely ask you to fork over some money to buy more space as you go. See why Microsoft, Google Drive, Apple iCloud and Amazon Cloud Drive might want to get your business early?

Even though those companies are huge and powerful, they're not necessarily leading the virtual hard drive race. Turns out a little start-up called Dropbox showed up to fight. While it's not winning the race yet, we can say that the service -- at 50 million users -- might've gotten a better place at the starting line, as it has a super easy user interface for sharing, syncing and uploading files.

But are there any dangers in using virtual hard drives?

A virtual drive, also called virtual disc or disk emulator, is a non-existing drive that does not physically exist in the computer. But the disk emulator is necessary tool for many people. You get a disc image of a popular video game, for example. it allows you to play the game without burning the image to a disc. Plus, many movie enthusiasts back up their DVD movies as ISO image, which is not a playable format. It also enables you watch the movies without discs. Many people prefer to use disk emulator more than physical disk, because disc image and virtual disk have better performance. They run faster than optical drives and are able to bypass the spinning up process, which is necessary for the optical drive. Moreover, it could protect DVDs and other discs. With a virtual drive, you can use the disc image as a real disc without damaging the original one. And you can set up dozens of separate them from one image file. Considering it is so important, we will talk about how to use it to mount disc images in this post.

Part 1. Create disc image for Virtual Drive

Today, people almost could download anything from internet. If you need a video game or an operating system, you can download their disc images online easily. But if you already have a physical disc, you can create a disc image by your own. We recommend you using Tipard DVD Cloner, because it is one of the most stable ISO creators on market.

How to create disc image with Tipard DVD Cloner

Download the correct version of DVD Cloner from its official website and follow the on-screen instruction to install it on your PC. Insert the disc you want to back up into computer's optical drive and run DVD Cloner.

Go to File menu and choose Load DVD option to load the entire DVD. After DVD loaded, you can preview the files and videos first. Then locate to bottom area of the interface and press the Full Copy button.

Choose your DVD drive from the Source drop-down list and ISO image from the Target drop-down list. Click on the Next button to continue.

Here you can pick a location to save the disc image by clicking on the button with three-point icon in After Burning section.

Finally, click on the Start button to start creating disc image for virtual drive.

After a few minutes, you can get the ISO image file saved in the location you set in step 4.

Part 2. How to mount disc image in Windows 7

Windows 7 and early versions do not have built-in virtual drive capacity, so you have to use a third party tool to mount disc images, such as DVDFab Virtual Drive.

Right-click on the disc image file and choose Mount option.

If you already install the software in your Windows 7, it will appear on the available virtual drive list. Press DVDFab Virtual Drive to mount the disc image.

Then you can use the disc image as a physical disc, although there is no physical disc in optical drive.

Part 3. How to use virtual drive in Windows 8/ Window 10

Windows 8 and later versions support ISO mounting natively, so you do not need to download and install any software on your computer.

Virtual Drive Windows 10

Right-click on the ISO image file and choose Windows Explorer from the Open with list.

Then the disc image will show as a disc in a virtual disk. If it is a DVD movie image, you can play it in any media player supports DVD.

When you want to unmount the disc image, right-click on the virtual drive that the disc image is mounted in and choose Eject to unmount the disc image.

Part 4. How to mount ISO on a virtual drive on Mac

Sometimes, a 'virtual hard drive' (and all its vocabulary variations) has less to do with a storage server and way more to do with an operating system. Say you had a Mac and needed to run a Windows application (not a far-out option if you had a Mac at home and Windows at work, for instance). By downloading virtual drive software (or using a native program, if your operating system offers it), you basically trick the computer into thinking there's a whole other drive on it. From that drive, you can work with different operating systems. That's not all -- these kinds of virtual drives will also let you encrypt files for extra security and might even allow you to create a file of a CD or DVD so you don't have to physically have the disk in your computer. They can do so much, in fact, that we can't cover all the uses here. Instead, let's just plow ahead to our virtual drive-as cloud storage.

Advertisement

Advertisement

As we saw from the evolution of the hard drive (and external hard drive), we can pretty confidently predict that digital storage space -- and the high demand for it -- is going to keep growing. Think about this: The average storage for a floppy disk was about 1.44 MB. SkyDrive, a virtual hard drive offered by Microsoft, gives away 7GB of storage free and clear. This means you'd have to have roughly 10,000 floppy disks on you to access all your data at any given time.

Creating a robust, intelligent virtual hard drive has become big business. Because after you use up your 7GB, Microsoft (and any other cloud storage server) is going to politely ask you to fork over some money to buy more space as you go. See why Microsoft, Google Drive, Apple iCloud and Amazon Cloud Drive might want to get your business early?

Even though those companies are huge and powerful, they're not necessarily leading the virtual hard drive race. Turns out a little start-up called Dropbox showed up to fight. While it's not winning the race yet, we can say that the service -- at 50 million users -- might've gotten a better place at the starting line, as it has a super easy user interface for sharing, syncing and uploading files.

But are there any dangers in using virtual hard drives?

A virtual drive, also called virtual disc or disk emulator, is a non-existing drive that does not physically exist in the computer. But the disk emulator is necessary tool for many people. You get a disc image of a popular video game, for example. it allows you to play the game without burning the image to a disc. Plus, many movie enthusiasts back up their DVD movies as ISO image, which is not a playable format. It also enables you watch the movies without discs. Many people prefer to use disk emulator more than physical disk, because disc image and virtual disk have better performance. They run faster than optical drives and are able to bypass the spinning up process, which is necessary for the optical drive. Moreover, it could protect DVDs and other discs. With a virtual drive, you can use the disc image as a real disc without damaging the original one. And you can set up dozens of separate them from one image file. Considering it is so important, we will talk about how to use it to mount disc images in this post.

Part 1. Create disc image for Virtual Drive

Today, people almost could download anything from internet. If you need a video game or an operating system, you can download their disc images online easily. But if you already have a physical disc, you can create a disc image by your own. We recommend you using Tipard DVD Cloner, because it is one of the most stable ISO creators on market.

How to create disc image with Tipard DVD Cloner

Download the correct version of DVD Cloner from its official website and follow the on-screen instruction to install it on your PC. Insert the disc you want to back up into computer's optical drive and run DVD Cloner.

Go to File menu and choose Load DVD option to load the entire DVD. After DVD loaded, you can preview the files and videos first. Then locate to bottom area of the interface and press the Full Copy button.

Choose your DVD drive from the Source drop-down list and ISO image from the Target drop-down list. Click on the Next button to continue.

Here you can pick a location to save the disc image by clicking on the button with three-point icon in After Burning section.

Finally, click on the Start button to start creating disc image for virtual drive.

After a few minutes, you can get the ISO image file saved in the location you set in step 4.

Part 2. How to mount disc image in Windows 7

Windows 7 and early versions do not have built-in virtual drive capacity, so you have to use a third party tool to mount disc images, such as DVDFab Virtual Drive.

Right-click on the disc image file and choose Mount option.

If you already install the software in your Windows 7, it will appear on the available virtual drive list. Press DVDFab Virtual Drive to mount the disc image.

Then you can use the disc image as a physical disc, although there is no physical disc in optical drive.

Part 3. How to use virtual drive in Windows 8/ Window 10

Windows 8 and later versions support ISO mounting natively, so you do not need to download and install any software on your computer.

Virtual Drive Windows 10

Right-click on the ISO image file and choose Windows Explorer from the Open with list.

Then the disc image will show as a disc in a virtual disk. If it is a DVD movie image, you can play it in any media player supports DVD.

When you want to unmount the disc image, right-click on the virtual drive that the disc image is mounted in and choose Eject to unmount the disc image.

Part 4. How to mount ISO on a virtual drive on Mac

Apple has integrated virtual drive Mac in the operation system, so you can create a virtual drive through ISO image directly.

Locate to the folder contains the ISO image file and mount ISO file by double-clicking. If it is mounted successfully, you can find the disc image on your desktop like an inserted DVD.

If double-clicking is not successful, you can go to Disk Utility. Choose Open Disk Image under the File menu and select the ISO file you want to mount. Then it will be mounted on your desktop. Disk Utility works for most disc image formats, including ISO, DMG and IMG.

Part 5. How to make a virtual drive under Linux

Linux is a special operating system; but as Mac OS X, Linux is able to turn ISO image to a virtual drive natively.

Virtual Drive For Mac

• 1. Switch to root user with following command, if not login as a root user: $ su -
• 2. Type in the command line below to create a directory to mount the ISO: # mkdir –p /mnt/disk.
  You can replace disk in the command line with any folder name as you wish.
• 3. Mount the image file with the command line: # mount –o loop [sample].iso /mnt/disk/
  Replace [sample] with the image filename and disk with the folder name you customized in step 2.
• 4. Then the image file has been mounted and you can access it as a physical disk.

Conclusion

Virtual drive has many benefits, so game players, movie enthusiasts and other people prefer the drive to optical drive and physical disc. In this article, we shared the basic methods to mount ISO images on virtual disc on different platforms. Windows 7 and earlier versions do not have the features, but there are many third party tools available. Windows 8/8.1, 10, and Mac OS X, Linux have embedded the virtual driver natively, so you can mount an ISO file by the built-in one directly. If you want to mount an ISO file on a virtual drive, you have to create an ISO file first. We recommend you using Tipard DVD Cloner to extract image from a disc, because this application has the capacity to create high quality ISO files.

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