How to mount ISO images using Alcohol 120%

Posted on April 30, 2009 at 5:03 am

Alcohol 120% is a really cool software that will let you create virtual CD/DVD ROM drives.  With a virtual drive, you won’t have to load the physical media, so you can preserve those expensive games CDs or DVDs on your hard drive.  It is also very useful for mounting ISO files so you dont’ have to burn them to physical media.

So how do we create a virtual CD/DVD ROM drive?  In Alcohol you can set multiple virtual drives using its easy to use GUI.  First open the Alcohol 120% application and then click Virtual Drive under the Options group:

image

 

The options window will open with the Virtual Drive parameter fields. Set the number of virtual drives to 1 if you want to make only 1 virtual drive (or more if you want).  Check the Remount images upon system reboot if you want the drive to remain loaded after restarting Windows.    

image

Set the drive letter of the virtual drive using the Drive letter field.  By default it will use the next available drive letter it could find from your computer.  Click OK to activate the drive.

image

In the example above it used the drive “F” as the drive letter.  You can confirm the drive by exploring it on Windows Explorer:

image

If you click the drive you will see a message like below:

image

This means the disk has no media inside it.  Since this is a virtual drive, we need to point this to a CD or DVD image (like an ISO or any disk image file).  To load an ISO file, right click the drive using the Alcohol window and then choose Mount Image:

image

Locate the ISO file using the Open dialog box:

image

Then you should be able to see the image loaded on the virtual drive:

image

After this you can use the virtual drive like an ordinary CD/DVD ROM drive.  Browse the drive to see the content of the ISO image:

image

You may use the same steps above for any of the image file formats shown below:

image

If you want to change the image file loaded, use the steps above to point to other image files. 

Overall, I am very happy with how Alcohol 120% handled my image files.  With this tool I don’t have to waste blank CDs or DVDs just to be able to use the image files. You can also read my previous post on how to mount ISO images using Virtual CD-ROM from Microsoft. 

Ben Carigtan shows you how it’s done.

» Filed Under Software Reviews

Related Posts

Comments

8 Responses to “How to mount ISO images using Alcohol 120%”

  1. Michael The Dumb Tech Geek said on : April 30th, 2009 at 6:20 am

    This is a very thorough tutorial. I used this software back in the day and having your write-up for it would have eased the frustration process a bit.
    I will warn some though: when I tried loading this on my new Vista, I continuously got the Blue Screen of Death. Might just be me (most stories of Vista are ‘just me’ stories), but I thought I’d share.
    However I was successful with installing Alcohol 52% onto that same Vista. And the steps for mounting disc images are the same for 52% as they are for 120%.
    Again, thanks Ben!


  2. Dave said on : May 25th, 2009 at 8:57 pm

    Great walk through, I’ve tried to mount a few times, with your description and screen shots, I breezed through it.


  3. Steve said on : July 18th, 2009 at 11:20 pm

    I always seem to forget the steps to mounting an ISO file and i searched on youtube for a video and nothing came up. I accidentally found this website and read through your instructions. There simple enough a monkey could do it. Thanks for the instructions


  4. Orion said on : July 23rd, 2009 at 2:17 pm

    When I try and create a virtual drive, there are no options on the drive letter screen. It is just blank and no options. I hit ok and nothing happens. Please help!


  5. JunQ said on : October 11th, 2009 at 2:48 am

    What the F—-k!!! your tutorial is easy and very very helpful.. this is my first time mounting an ISO file and using alcohol… man!! you rock!! tnx…


  6. Snugs said on : October 15th, 2009 at 1:41 am

    Orion — It makes a default for you in alphabetical order

    example:

    your cd drive is E:/ it will make it F:/ just like in the picture


  7. Orion said on : October 18th, 2009 at 5:16 am

    Snug, yes I read all of the instructions. But it will not make any drives. No E:/, F:/ etc. Is there anything else I can try?


  8. tze said on : November 21st, 2009 at 1:28 am

    Thank you so much. This is really helpful. I appreciate it a lot! I really needed help mounting an ISO image!


Please post your comments/suggestions!