How To Mount ISO, BIN, IMG, VHD As Virtual Drives Using Gizmo Drive

Whether you want to install a software which is available as an ISO, IMG, or BIN file, or VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) files for Microsoft Virtual PC, you can avoid burning the images to CD or DVD by mounting them as a virtual drive. If you are tired of having separate programs for mounting VHD, ISO, IMG, etc, then here is an all in one solution, Gizmo Drive.

A very versatile software, Gizmo drive lets you mount up to 26 virtual drives simultaneously, from all types of mountable files including ISO, VHD (Virtual Hard Disks), BIN, CUE, CCD (CloneCD images), NRG (Nero Burning ROM images), IMG, and MDF/MDS (Media Descriptor Files). Apart from mounting, unmounting at the click of a button from the right click context menu, you can also create an encrypted virtual hard drive for protecting your private files, create ISO from folder or disk, as well as burn ISO or folder contents to disk.

Gizmo Drive Installation

Gizmo Drive is available as part of Gizmo Central, a whole suite of applications which also includes a script automation tool, text editor, hex and binary editor, a query and stored procedure analyzer, a hasher, and so on. During installation, choose Gizmo Central and Gizmo Drive before proceeding, if you are only interested in managing virtual drives.

After the installation is complete, you should reboot your PC. If you try to mount a device without restarting, you will get a message saying ‘The device driver for Gizmo drive is not running. Please reboot your computer to start the drive before attempting to mount an image. Would you like to reboot now?’.

Gizmo Toolbar And Manager

Once Gizmo is running, you can access all it’s functionality from the system tray. The Gizmo toolbar which pops up when you click the Gizmo tray icon lets you add your favorite programs or folders, so that you can open them fast. Simply drag and drop program or folder shortcuts from the start menu or desktop on to Gizmo toolbar.

You can open Gizmo Manager from the Gizmo Toolbar, This is the main program window for managing all the virtual drives on your PC, customizing the Gizmo Toolbar that shows up when you click the Gizmo icon in the system tray, change mounting and other options such as data compression (in case of creating a virtual hard drive), etc. 

How To Mount ISO, VHD, IMG, BIN, CUE, NRG files as Virtual Disks

You can mount image files to either virtual CD/DVD drive or virtual hard drive either from the right context menu for that file, from Gizmo toolbar in the system tray or from Gizmo Manager’s Virtual Drives tab.

Simply right click on the ISO or VHD file and select ‘Mount Image’.

This will open the ‘Mount Image’ dialog, where you can browse and select the image file, choose the drive letter, the action to be performed after mounting the image (run auto play, launch windows explorer, do both), and also tell Gizmo to remount this image each time Windows starts (makes life easy for all those of you who regularly mount certain images). Click ‘OK’ and your image is instantly mounted to the first available device.

If you like to mount an image file to a specified device in Gizmo (by default 10 devices are available, this can be extended to 26), then mount the image from the system tray by right clicking on Gizmo icon and selecting Virtual Drives –> Device [number] –> Mount Image.

You can view the entire list of mounted files by going to the ‘Virtual Drives screen’ in Gizmo Manager. Right click on Gizmo tray icon and select Virtual Drives –> Show Virtual Drives Screen or open Gizmo Manager and click on ‘Virtual Drives’ in the left side panel.

How To Unmount Virtual Drives

You can unmount all the mounted images by right clicking on ‘Virtual Drives’ in the left side panel of Gizmo Manager and selecting ‘Unmount All’. Similarly you unmount each of the drives individually by right clicking on the corresponding device.

Unmounting can be done from the system tray as well as from the right click context menu of the mounted file.

How To Add Or Remove Virtual Devices

As previously mentioned, by default 10 devices are available in Gizmo Manager for mounting image files, You can extend this by changing the number of Devices (max 26) in  ‘Mount Options’. Right click on ‘Virtual Drives’ in the left side panel of Gizmo Manager and select ‘Options’ to open the Mount Options dialog. Here you can also select the order in which the drive letters are assigned. By default the first available drive letter is used, starting with I:.

Add Toolbar Items To Run Tasks, Mount Images With Single Click

Gizmo Toolbar provides a lot of flexibility by allowing you to add single click image mounting items as well as tasks that let you launch dialogs for mounting, creating or burning ISO images, and so on without opening the Gizmo Manager.

You can add a task, a launcher (application, document, folder, web page, or object) , Image Mounter (for mounting a specified image to a chosen virtual device automatically) toolbar item by right clicking on Gizmo tray icon and selecting Add Item. In the following dialog, select the type of item you want to add and let the wizard guide you.

The toolbar gives you single click access to mounting an image, starting a dialog, and so on.

Change Toolbar Style

You can customize the toolbar by selecting from a wide array of available presets, to make it look like a Mac style dock such as Rocket Dock, or a stylish circular dock. Right click on Gizmo tray icon to go to Toolbar Setup, and click on the ‘Toolbar Gallery’ button to choose one of your liking.

We recommend Gizmo Drive to all those advanced as well as regular users of virtual drives, who frequently mount and unmount, create and burn image files.

Download Gizmo Drive

Works with Windows 7, Windows Server, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows 2000. Supports both 32 bit and 64 bit versions.

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