Write an article based on this "Pick your imaging and virtual drive software. Prepare the game for imaging. Set your disc image preferences. Setup the virtual drive. Mount your disc image to the virtual drive. Run the game."
The imaging software is used to create the disc image, while the virtual drive is used to read it. Options in software can range from free, to shareware, to paid. These instructions will utilize free software (IMGBurn/WinCDEmu); steps may vary when using other software. Popular disc image software: IMGBurn (free), MagicISO, PowerISO. Popular virtual drive software: WinCDEmu (free), Alcohol 120% (paid). Insert the game disc and launch the imaging software. With IMGBurn a quickstart screen appears upon launch. Press "Create Image File from Disc" to proceed to read mode. If the disc was not detected automatically, you can manually select its optical drive here. Other options include file destination, image file format, and read speed. When you have set your preferences, press the arrow to begin the image creation. Image software utilizes many different file formats, including .img, .iso, .bin/.cue, .dmg (Mac only). The software will automatically select a file format based on basic data on the disc. This is typically the safest option to use since most virtual drive software will support all of them. Make sure you have sufficient disc space to store a disc image. They will typically be as large as the data contained on the disc (up to 700MB for a CD and up to 4.7GB for a DVD). Once the disc image is created you can remove the disc from the drive. Open the virtual drive software and press "Add Virtual Drive". A new virtual optical drive will appear in the drive list. This drive will also appear in Windows Explorer and even be assigned a drive letter. Press "Add Image" and browse to the location of your disc image file. Upon mounting the image file the computer will respond as though the disc has been inserted into the drive. All of the data from the disc is there and can be browsed and accessed. With the mounted image file, the game will run normally as though the physical disc were in the drive.