gBurner Virtual Drive vs ImDisk

gBurner Virtual Drive is a free Windows utility for creating virtual CD/DVD drives and accessing disc images without burning them to physical discs. It can create up to 16 virtual drives and supports formats including ISO, GBI/GBP, DAA, NRG, MDF/MDS, BIN/CUE, UIF, ISZ, DMG, IMG, and VCD. To mount an image, users open the virtual-drive tray menu, choose the mount command, select an image, and confirm. The same menu provides an unmount command. The download page lists Windows support from version 98 through Windows 11, including 32-bit and 64-bit editions. The free utility is listed at free and is described as free for personal and business use. However, the download comparison identifies mounting an image file to a virtual drive as a gBurner Pro feature rather than a gBurner Free feature. Pro costs $39.95, paid once. The maker says game and program images can run at over 200 times the speed of a conventional CD/DVD-ROM.

ImDisk is a free Windows virtual disk driver for creating disk volumes from image files or system memory. It can present virtual hard disk partitions, floppy drives, and CD/DVD drives, with support for raw images, VHD, VDI, VMDK, NRG, SDI, and BIN formats. The installer provides the imdisk.exe console tool, a Control Panel applet, and an Explorer command for mounting files. I/O requests can be passed to third-party image handlers or services on other computers over a network. API functions are available to C/C++, COM, and .NET applications, with wrapper libraries on NuGet. The current installer supports 32-bit and 64-bit Windows and lists x86, ia64, x64, arm32, and arm64 architectures. ImDisk is free to download and use; a voluntary usage fee is welcome. The maker says it receives maintenance fixes, but no new features are planned and its legacy design is not recommended for recent Windows versions.