DAEMON Tools is a

virtual drive Virtual disk and virtual drive are software components that emulate an actual disk storage device. Virtual disks and virtual drives are common components of virtual machines in hardware virtualization, but they are also widely used for various p ...

and optical disc authoring program for Microsoft Windows and

Mac OS Two major famlies of Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc. In 1984, Apple debuted the operating system that is now known as the "Classic" Mac OS with its release of the original Macintosh System Software. The system, rebranded "M ...

Overview

DAEMON tools was originally a successor of ''Generic SafeDisc emulator'' and incorporated all of its features. The program claims to be able to defeat most

copy protection Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy prevention and copy restriction, describes measures to enforce copyright by preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media. Copy protection is most commonly found o ...

schemes such as

SafeDisc ''SafeDisc'' is a copy protection program for Microsoft Windows applications and games distributed on optical disc. Created by Macrovision Corporation, it was aimed to hinder unauthorized disc duplication. The program was first introduced in 19 ...

and

SecuROM SecuROM was a CD/ DVD copy protection and digital rights management (DRM) product developed by Sony DADC. It aims to prevent unauthorised copying and reverse engineering of software, primarily commercial computer games running on Microsoft Windo ...

. It is currently compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10. DAEMON Tools has a special mode for proper operation of copies of discs with advanced protection (

SecuRom SecuROM was a CD/ DVD copy protection and digital rights management (DRM) product developed by Sony DADC. It aims to prevent unauthorised copying and reverse engineering of software, primarily commercial computer games running on Microsoft Windo ...

and

LaserLock LaserLock is a copy restriction system for CD-ROMs with 32-bit Windows applications introduced by MLS LaserLock International Inc. in 1995. LaserLock is supposed to check whether the original storage medium of a program is inserted. This check can b ...

, CDCOPS,

StarForce The Starforce is a supervillain team appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Its first appearance was in the comic ''The Avengers (comic book), Avengers'' #346 released in 1992, as part of the "Operation: Galactic Storm" st ...

and Protect CD), which are used on some discs with games.

Editions

Six editions of the product exist: Ultra, Lite, Pro Standard, Pro Advanced, Net and DT for Mac. A feature comparison is given below. Also, company provides two additional solutions for the data storage organization: DAEMON Tools USB 2 that allows sharing different types of USB devices between remote workstations and DAEMON Tools iSCSI Target 2 – a cross-platform solution that enables creating an

iSCSI Internet Small Computer Systems Interface or iSCSI ( ) is an Internet Protocol-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. iSCSI provides block-level access to storage devices by carrying SCSI commands over a TCP/IP ...

storage server and provides access to virtual or physical devices, along with VHD images, within home or corporate network. ;Notes: :A. Free for non-commercial use without technical support. Technical support and the right to use commercially may be purchased. :B. In

Korea Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...

, Freemium license is not available since ver. 4.45.1. :C. Applies on to .mds and .mdx images. :D. Supported output formats include .iso, .mds/.mdf and .mdx :E. The ability to split an image files into multiple files of fxed maximum sizes. Not supported by DAEMON Tools Lite, as of 22 February 2012. :F. The ability to mount an image into a folder on an

NTFS New Technology File System (NTFS) is a proprietary journaling file system developed by Microsoft. Starting with Windows NT 3.1, it is the default file system of the Windows NT family. It superseded File Allocation Table (FAT) as the preferred fil ...

drive

File format

The default file format of DAEMON Tools is Media Data eXtended (MDX). MDX is a

disc image A disk image, in computing, is a computer file containing the contents and structure of a disk volume or of an entire data storage device, such as a hard disk drive, tape drive, floppy disk, optical disc, or USB flash drive. A disk image is usua ...

file format similar to MDS/MDF images. It supports all of MDS/MDF format features except that all data is in one monolithic file only. The files of these types bear the filename extension of . MDX file contains metadata of original media – specifically the main physical parameters of disc, such as layer breaks, sessions, tracks and other. It could be described as being an archive file containing all data from a CD/DVD. It also supports

data compression In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compressio ...

. MDX file includes the magic number "MEDIA DESCRIPTOR" at the beginning of the file.

Controversy

On 13 February 2012, one of DAEMON Tools components known as MountSpace became a subject of privacy concerns. MountSpace, a service-oriented component gathers and sends information about disc images used in DAEMON Tools to mountspace.com along with users'

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

es. Although MountSpace can be disabled during installation, it is criticized for transmitting information despite being disabled and lacking a privacy policy. The initial discovery of the concerning issue is attributed to Rafael Rivera of ''Within Windows'' blog.

Related programs

Y.A.S.U.

YASU ''(Yet Another SecuROM Utility)'' is a very small tool that works as a ''SCSI-drive protector''. It was created by sYk0 and can be used to hide emulated drives from SecuROM 7 and SafeDisc 4. YASU is a companion program for Daemon Tools and currently being hosted, supported and maintained by the Daemon Tools team. On March 4 of 2009, sYk0 announced development of Omen which is to succeed development of YASU. As of January 2010, development of Omen has been abandoned.

References

External links

* {{Disk image emulators software Disk image emulators Windows-only software Optical disc authoring software Utilities for Windows