Daemon Tools
DAEMON Tools is a virtual drive and optical disc authoring program for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS.
Overview
DAEMON tools was originally a successor of Generic SafeDisc emulator and incorporated all of its features. The program claims to be able to defeat most copy protection schemes such as SafeDisc and SecuROM. It is currently compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10. DAEMON Tools has a special mode for proper operation of copies of discs with advanced protection, which are used on some discs with games.Editions
Six editions of the product exist: Ultra, Lite, Pro Standard, Pro Advanced, Net and DT for Mac. A feature comparison is given below. Also, company provides two additional solutions for the data storage organization: DAEMON Tools USB 2 that allows sharing different types of USB devices between remote workstations and DAEMON Tools iSCSI Target 2 – a cross-platform solution that enables creating an iSCSI storage server and provides access to virtual or physical devices, along with VHD images, within home or corporate network.| Feature | Lite 5 | Pro Standard 5 | Pro Advanced 5 | Net 5 | Ultra 2 | for Mac 2 |
| License type | ||||||
| Maximum number of DT and SCSI virtual devices | 4 | 16 | 32 | 32 | 32 | Unlimited |
| Maximum number of IDE virtual devices | 0 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 0 |
| Command-line interface | ||||||
| Image compression | ||||||
| Image password protection | ||||||
| Image creation | ||||||
| Burning images | ||||||
| Image collection's management | ||||||
| Image editing | ||||||
| Image splitting | ||||||
| Shell extensions | ||||||
| Virtual device property monitoring | ||||||
| Volume Mount Points | ||||||
| Burning RMPS data on discs | ||||||
| Image conversion | ||||||
| Mounting virtual hard disks | ||||||
| Installation over the network | ||||||
| Image Catalog sharing | ||||||
| iSCSI Server | ||||||
| iSCSI Initiator | ||||||
| Mounting images on remote computers | ||||||
| Sharing disc drives on the network | ||||||
| Bootable USB creation | ||||||
| RAM Disk creation | ||||||
| TrueCrypt image creation | ||||||
| Mounting ZIP files |
;Notes:
File format
The default file format of DAEMON Tools is Media Data eXtended. MDX is a disc image file format similar to MDS/MDF images. It supports all of MDS/MDF format features except that all data is in one monolithic file only. The files of these types bear the filename extension of .mdx.MDX file contains metadata of original media – specifically the main physical parameters of disc, such as layer breaks, sessions, tracks and other. It could be described as being an archive file containing all data from a CD/DVD. It also supports data compression. MDX file includes the magic number "MEDIA DESCRIPTOR" at the beginning of the file.