If you are seeking a suitable application for emulating virtual drives and handling the virtual images on the PC, apparently you will hold your sight on one of the two most functional and comfortable tools able to manage the ISO, BIN or CUE disks: DAEMON Tools and PowerISO. Regarding their abilities, they overcome the opportunities of the rest of products, designed with similar purpose, and satisfy the needs of the most sophisticated and demanding users. But which tool is better among them: DAEMON Tools or PowerISO? In this article I will make a brief comparison of these two apps and dedicate this review to the distinct features of each of mentioned products.
Important note: I will compare the free Lite and unregistered versions of the DAEMON Tools and PowerISO programs appropriately, because their abilities may be quite enough for handling and processing any virtual images. If you require the tool for creating images from scratch (data files, audio tracks or optical disks), you will have to use the registered version of either of these two products.
Here comes the detailed review of primary apps functions:
- the mounting of image files on virtual drive. Both of the apps support the most popular file formats and extensions: ISO, CUE/BIN, IMG, CDI, NRG, VCD, MDF/MDS and others. In comparison with DAEMON Tools, PowerISO supports more formats. Thus, it is more dexterous tool. At the same time, DAEMON Tools owns the personal format called MDX, which PowerISO doesn’t support. As a conclusion, I may say, that PowerISO is more universal app, not considering the fact of presence of unique featured DT format.
- the quantity of virtual drives to be created. The Lite-build of DAEMON Tools is able to create only 4 DT and SCSI virtual drives and none of IDE-devices, whereas PowerISO may work with 23 virtual drives simultaneously. The SCSI and DT protocol will be especially useful for handling and managing the instances of laser discs with miscellaneous sophisticated protection: Protect CD, StarForce, CDCOPS, LaserLock, SecuRom and SafeDisk, which are mostly applicable for games, so take it into account while choosing the tool for operating with optical disks with advanced secure technologies.
- the creating of new image files from optical disks, data files or audio tracks. Only paid Pro and Ultra builds of DAEMON Tools comprise this feature, whereas the functionality of Lite build is limited to copying only the optical discs to external ISO or MDX format file.
At the same time, the unregistered version of PowerISO is quite able to create the virtual images with size of up to 300 Mb, so this is almost nothing. - the burning of virtual images on CD/DVD. The Lite-build of DT can’t do that at all, whereas the PowerISO tool is quite capable to burn any image files on CD, DVD or BD-discs. Basically, the unregistered copy of PowerISO has no any limitations on any application functionalities, except the size of new image files to be created, so consider it while making a selection.
- the ability to work with advanced secure technologies for protection of the discs. As I told before, DAEMON Tools is much more powerful regarding that matter. Thanks to support of SCSI and DT-interfaces, all the most sophisticated and complex protection technologies are not a barrier for DT, so if you are going to emulate one of the latest games downloaded from web, take DAEMON Tools, - 95% out of 100 probability, that this app will be capable to handle with it successfully.
- additional functions. That is all, what DT can do. At the same time, the functionality of PowerISO is much more powerful. You may compress the images to smaller size using several compression methods, splitting to volumes and applying password protection, make the duplicates of any optical disks to external files, stored on the hard drive, copy the disk to another storage device, make a multitude of operations with USB-devices (making files from USB-handler, creating bootable USB-drives and cleaning the device), managing with ZIP/RAR/7Z archives and even more. So if you require multitasking virtual emulator, pay an exclusive attention to PowerISO.
That is everything, regarding the specials of such extensive and ultra-functional tools, as DAEMON Tools and PowerISO. Make a quick glance over the abilities of the apps, and this will definitely assist you in making a correct choice among these two utilities.
