Virtual DVD Drive

What Is a Virtual DVD Drive?

A virtual DVD drive is a non-physical drive created by a CD emulator like Virtual Drive, and is used to play DVD images, or virtual DVDs.

Although Windows recognizes a virtual DVD drive as a regular DVD-ROM drive and assigns it a drive letter, a virtual DVD drive operates directly on the hard disk. Usually, the total of virtual DVD drives on one system cannot exceed the number of available drive letters. A virtual DVD can be pre-loaded in a virtual DVD drive for quick launch, or it can be “inserted” by dragging and dropping.

About Virtual DVDs

A virtual DVD is an image file of a DVD: it holds the entire contents of a DVD in electronic format. While virtual DVDs can include music, they’re most often used for video games and disc-based applications. Because virtual DVDs can’t be scratched or broken and are easy to transport, they’re favored by parents with small children and mobile PC gamers. Other benefits include:

• Optimal performance
  Virtual DVD-ROMs have playback times up to 200 times faster than physical DVD-ROMs
• Reduced demand on system resources
  Virtual DVD eliminate the need for a DVD-ROM drive and extend the charge of laptop batteries
• DVD archiving
  Organize your virtual DVDs in a Windows-like library
• Disc backup
  Protect your DVDs from loss, theft, and damage by using high-quality disc images instead
• Multiple disc play
  Pre-load up to 23 virtual DVD drives and toggle back and forth between games or volumes of a DVD set
• Portability and convenience
  Transport your virtual DVDs on a laptop or external hard drive
• Custom virtual DVD creation
  Add documentation, multimedia, and images to your virtual DVD and share it over a network