PowerISO

About PowerISO

Everything to do with disc images sits in this one window. An image mounts as a virtual drive so its contents are readable without extracting, and the virtual drive count is configurable so several images can be mounted at once. That alone covers most of what people install it for, and it does it without a reboot after the driver registers.

Editing an image in place is the part that separates it from a simple mounting tool. Files can be added to, removed from or renamed inside an existing image without unpacking the whole thing and rebuilding it, and the changes write back to the same file. Images can be split into parts for transfer across size limited media and rejoined afterwards.

Conversion and creation cover the formats that turn up in practice, including the common image containers and the proprietary ones that other tools produce. A new image can be built from a folder on disk or read directly from a physical disc, with the file system and boot information preserved so the result is a working copy rather than a data dump.

The bootable USB tool is the one most people end up using now that optical drives have gone. A bootable image writes to a stick with the boot records handled correctly for both UEFI and legacy systems, and the burning module still handles physical media, including audio discs, with verification after writing.

What is included in this build

• Mount images as virtual drives with a configurable number of drives
• Edit images in place by adding, removing or renaming files without a full rebuild
• Create images from a folder on disk or directly from a physical disc
• Convert between the common and proprietary image container formats
• Split images into parts for transfer and rejoin them afterwards
• Write bootable images to USB with correct boot records for UEFI and legacy
• Burn physical media including data and audio discs with verification
• Compression and password free archive extraction for common archive formats

Changed in version 9.4.0

• Improved UEFI boot record handling when writing to USB
• Faster image conversion on very large files
• Better support for images produced by current authoring tools
• Fixed a rare mounting failure after a fast startup resume
• Additional interface language corrections

Installation walkthrough

These steps assume a clean machine. If a previous release of the same application is present, deal with that first, since an overlapping install is the most common cause of a setup that stops halfway.

1. Extract the archive to any folder.
2. Close any application currently using a mounted virtual drive.
3. Run the installer as administrator so the virtual drive driver registers.
4. Choose during setup which image file associations to take over.
5. Reboot once if the virtual drive does not appear immediately after installation.

System requirements and file details

Frequently asked about this title