virtual rom drive

What Is a Virtual CD-ROM?
A virtual CD-ROM is a compressed disc image of a physical CD-ROM. Unlike a physical CD-ROM, which plays in a CD-ROM drive, a virtual CD-ROM runs directly on the hard drive. A virtual CD-ROM is an image of an entire disc, and not just a single track (as is the case with MP3). Because it holds the entire contents of a physical disc in a compressed format, virtual CD-ROM is often used to run video games and disc-based applications on mobile devices lacking a CD-ROM drive.

http://www.farstone.com/virtual-cd/virtual-cd-rom.htm

 

In short - many games for example require that the cd be in the drive at all times. A Virtual Drive copies the content of the cd to the hard drive and tricks the system into thinking the cd is in the drive.

 

Which term(s) don't you fully understand?

I've found that the term most users fail to grasp are the terms "image" & "iso ". People tend to think of an image as a picture or photo. But in computer tech, an image has several distinct definitions.

The one that applies to "virtual drive" is:

(1) In computer science an image is an exact replica of the contents of a storage device (a hard disk drive or CD-ROM for example) stored on a second storage device.

The "second storage device" in that definition is "your hard drive ".

The exact replica is a file, an "iso image" file.

ISO image is a term commonly associated with CD and DVD burning. An ISO image (or .ISO file) is a computer file that is an exact copy of an existing file system. An ISO can contain the entire contents of a CD-ROM disc or CD medium. ISO files are typically created through a software application that will open, create, edit, and extract CD or DVD image files, then convert the extracted image to an ISO file, easily allowing users to burn an exact copy of the original onto CD or DVD.

An ISO file can also be "mounted" using special software. (to "mount" means "To make a storage device available ")

The ISO is basically a file that has all the characteristics of the media, including the data that makes the media usable in a CDROM or DVDROM drive. When you stick a CD into the CDROM drive bay Windows usually automatically "mounts" the CD media and makes it available for use.

Special software can be used to interact with ISO files. The software creates what's known as a "virtual cd rom ". The ISO gets mounted and one can "play the cd or dvd" without having to actually use the CDROM drive or a CDROM disk. The ISO "is the disk ". The virtual cdrom drive appears as an icon in My Computer just like the real CDROM does.

Think of a "disk image" as a "picture duplicate" of all the "ones and zeroes" (the digital code). A picture = "an image or representation of something." In this case, a nearly exact representation of what's contained on a CD or DVD.