Years ago, I finally made the decision to stop buying an optical drive when building a new PC, because I can’t remember the last time I actually needed to put a disc into my computer. Yes, I’ll probably still get a 4K player someday — once the next PlayStation 5 or Xbox Whatever drops — but we live in a streaming and downloadable world now. It’s easy to make a bootable USB drive that’s even faster than installing something (like Windows 10) from a disc.
If you're shooting with all of your camera's settings on automatic, you're missing out. Your ISO setting -- among others -- can drastically improve your shots when used properly. This video guide from TechQuickie explains what you need to know.
Dear Lifehacker, Some years ago, I purchased a Windows 7 Pro upgrade licence from the It's Not Cheating promotion, which provided a download link via Digital River. I downloaded the software and burnt the ISO disc - unfortunately I used an ei.cfg tool and it messed up my disc, but I didn't discover it until now...
Windows 10 is finally here, and your computer will automatically prompt you to upgrade. But if you'd rather start fresh, you can do a clean install -- you just need to follow a few steps in the right order.
Windows: Can't decide whether you should commit your spare thumb drive to Windows recovery, Ubuntu or some other live-booting OS? Run MultiBootISOs on your USB drive, and you won't have to choose — you'll just choose between them at start-up.
If you're trying to install Windows 7 on a netbook (or are having issues with your PC's optical drive), the free USB Download Tool from Microsoft allows you to take a .ISO image and turn it into a bootable flash drive.
Windows/Mac/Linux: For the first few days after a new Linux release, grabbing an install image can be tough going. Not so if you've already got an alpha, beta or RC copy—use zsync to grab the necessary updated bits.
Windows only: The final RTM release of Windows 7 should be released later this month, and blogger and developer Long Zheng has created a small application designed to verify that your download is the real thing.
Good news for Windows users looking to burn a quick ISO disk image to a CD or DVD: Windows 7 supports dead simple burning of ISOs.
Burning that ISO to a disc is as simple as: Double-click the ISO file (or right-click and select Burn disc image.Click Burn.
Not too difficult now, was it? Of course, it'd be even better if Windows 7 could also mount those disk images in addition to burning them, but... baby steps. In the meantime, you can still mount disk images for free with one of the many disk mounting tools we've featured in the past. We had a bit of trouble with the ISO burning tool crashing in our tests, but presumably those bugs will be ironed by by the time Windows 7 hits the big show (or maybe not -- the basic DVD burning in Vista has always been a sea of bugs for me - Oz ed). If you've given ISO burning a try in Windows 7, share if you had better luck in the comments.
Windows only: You don't have a single .iso file to open, you have a pile you need to go through. ISODisk will help you cut through the pile and find the files you're looking for. ISODisk is a free application which allows you to mount a disk image and browse it like a regular drive. ISODisk won't mount other disk image formats like .nrg, .mdf, or .dmg files but shines at mounting up to twenty .iso images with unique drive letters. ISODisk will also create disk images from non-encrypted disks. ISODisk is freeware, Windows only.
Windows only: Create ISO-format disk images quickly and easily with Free ISO Creator. After downloading and installing the software, all you have to do is click Add File(s) or Add Folder to choose the data you want included in the image, select a name and location for the ISO file with "Save ISO As..." and click Convert. You can even create a bootable disk image by clicking Options and selecting the appropriate IMG file. Now you can burn the image to disk with ISO Recorder or mount the image as a virtual drive in Windows with the Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel, Clonedrive or Daemon Tools. Free ISO Creator is a free download for Windows. Free ISO Creator
Windows only: Free application Virtual CloneDrive mounts any common disk image file type as a virtual drive that you can browse as though it's a normal hard drive without burning a disc. The app supports popular disk image types like ISO, BIN, and CCD, and mounting an image once you've installed CloneDrive is as simple as double-clicking the file. We've covered similar tools in the past, but CloneDrive is the simplest implementation we've seen, and it's made by SlySoft, the folks who develop the popular DVD decryptor, AnyDVD. Virtual CloneDrive is a free download, Windows only. Virtual CloneDrive
Windows only: Free virtual archive tool Pismo File Mount can help you cut down on unnecessary CD burning and folder space by mounting compressed and ISO files as virtual drives. There are lots of utilities and means to do this, of course, but Pismo offers the simple route. Just right-click on a disc image or zipped file and choose "Mount" or "Quick Mount," and you can assign the folder to, say, drive Z:, or just have its contents pop up in a window. Grab what you need, close it down, and you're done. Pismo File Mount is a free download for Windows systems only. Pismo File Mount
