DAEMON Tools Lite 10.1

Even though it’s the lighter version of the more powerful DAEMON Tools Ultra edition, DAEMON Tools Lite manages to be more comprehensive and feature-rich than many of its competitors. And that’s quite remarkable, especially considering that DAEMON Tools Lite is free while many of its competitors are not.

DAEMON Tools has also been my favorite virtual drive manager since old days when Windows XP was a new operating system. I’m glad to see that the reasons that made it back then a great application are still available today. Back in the days, DAEMON Tools Lite was reliable. It ran smoothly on any system where I had installed it, it caused no errors and problems, and it always got its job done. Today, nothing changed - DAEMON Tools Lite will ensure that all your virtual drive management needs are promptly solved, without any unnecessary fuss or complications. Back in the days, DAEMON Tools Lite was also packing all the features that one could ever need from such a tool. Nowadays, DAEMON Tools Lite is even more comprehensive. It doesn’t only allow you to emulate and create virtual drives and mount disc images onto them, but it also comes with support for all the popular disc image formats, from the ubiquitous ISO to the lesser-known CCT or BWT. Last but not least, back in the days DAEMON Tools Lite was easy-to-use and straightforward, being renowned especially for residing unobtrusively in the system tray. Happily, things haven’t changed. Though being very comprehensive and powerful, DAEMON Tools Lite is still lightweight and simple-to-use, allowing even complete beginners like my sister to use it without any problem. Unfortunately the latest version doesn't seem to offer support for sending the application to the tray area anymore, which was one of my favorite features of this app in the past, or I just couldn't find this option anymore. Anyway it's a small thing that won't make me change my positive opinion about DAEMON Tools Lite.

I tested the latest version to create an ISO image and mount it on a virtual drive on my system without encountering any problem. Unfortunately this free Lite edition can create disc images only from other actual discs and not from separate files and folder from your local drives (the "Create a Data Image" feature is locked in the Lite edition). Anyway, this is just one of the rather many features that aren't available in this version. The good part is that I was and I still am a casual user of this tool therefore I don’t need the more advanced, intricate settings that the upgraded versions of this application offers, but I still can’t help but notice that the number of such options and functions that you get when upgrading this tool is truly impressive. Things like the support for emulating DT, SCSI, and HDD devices, the customizable hot keys, or the image catalog with automatic scanning are just a few examples of the many cool features this tool packs. Imagine how powerful the Ultra edition is, if this smaller, lighter version is already pretty comprehensive on its own.

To sum it all up, DAEMON Tools Lite is still one of the best virtual drive management apps that one can find, and for all the good reasons. It makes an already handy utility, the virtual drives, even handier.