Alcohol 120%

Creating a virtual drive on a PC is a fast solution to many of the problems that users face in their daily work. Not enough hard drive space? Tired of waiting each time for a disc to load while it slowly picks up new scratches and damage? Want to create disc images? Then it is worth getting to know Alcohol 120% better. This software has a number of important features. In addition to mounting images, it lets you burn CDs and DVDs and create backups of important discs, so the information on them lasts far longer.

Most users have a set of programs and files that they use every day, and constantly loading them from a physical disc, complete with the drive humming away, quickly becomes tedious. This is a particularly sensitive issue for gamers. A convenient solution is to mount a virtual drive. With a couple of clicks you can transfer the contents of a CD into a disc image and then launch it from a virtual drive by double-clicking. The utility can also write files directly from the PC hard drive using its Pre-Mastering technology. Among high quality video formats, Alcohol 120% recognises Blu-ray and HD DVD. You can run up to 31 virtual drives in the full version and 2 in the free edition, a capacity that few other applications provide.

Working with data on a virtual disc is many times faster than reading it from a physical CD. You will be pleasantly surprised at how quick and convenient it becomes to reach the information you need. When copying discs, Alcohol 120% can bypass a range of common copy protections, including SafeDisc, SecuROM, StarForce and LaserLock, in the editions that offer emulation. The utility can also work with discs over a network: thanks to its built-in iSCSI server, Alcohol 120% can share mounted virtual discs across a company network or between home computers connected to the same network. The program reads and creates images in many formats, including MDS, ISO, CCD, CUE, BWT, B5T, B6T, ISZ, CDI, PDI and NRG, and it can also mount image files that were made by other software.

Alcohol 120% allows for the creation and management of up to 31 virtual drives, enabling faster access to data and reducing physical disc wear.

On the 11th anniversary of the first release of Alcohol 120%, a special free version - Free Edition - was released for home, non-commercial use.

Alcohol 120% Free Edition lets you create only 2 virtual drives and burn only 1 disc at a time, and the copy protection emulation options are not available in this edition. Alcohol Soft has developed the program since 2002 and offers the paid editions with free lifetime updates. The software is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows, and a CD and DVD emulation-only edition called Alcohol 52% is also available for users who do not need the burning features.