Image mounting and image making software

[Liver]

What program would you get if you could only buy one? I am looking for image mounting software / emulation that I can take with my laptop, and maybe use on my desktop PC.

The choices I know of are
1. Alcohol 120% (seen in action over a year or more ago)
2. Gamejack (heard of it)
3. CloneCD (maybe in the same field as these programs)
4. Daemon Tools (I have no experience with this program).

What do you recommend and why?

No references to illegal software please. I have all the originals. I have cross traded games with many people on AT.

Liver

 

[BlueWeasel]

Well, if I recall correctly, CloneCD hasn't been updated in a long time and no longer supports the protection scheme used on newer games.

Daemon Tools can only mount images (it can't write them), but it's free though.

Alcohol 120% is updated frequently and can do both.

If you're looking for non-free software, then Alcohol is your best bet. There's not much difference between the mounting features of Daemon and Alcohol, but Daemon Tools doesn't have the ability to make images.

 

[Zugzwang152]

Originally posted by: BlueWeasel
Well, if I recall correctly, CloneCD hasn't been updated in a long time and no longer supports the protection scheme used on newer games.

Daemon Tools can only mount images (it can't write them), but it's free though.

Alcohol 120% is updated frequently and can do both.

If you're looking for non-free software, then Alcohol is your best bet. There's not much difference between the mounting features of Daemon and Alcohol, but Daemon Tools doesn't have the ability to make images.

Alcohol isn't updated as often as I'd like for a commercial product, though they do come out eventually, and I haven't failed to back up a game yet with it. Well worth the price in time saved, in my opinion.

 

[Deinonych]

Alcohol 120% is probably your best bet. However, more and more games blacklist it, so it's becoming less useful. GameJackal is supposed to work well with a broad spectrum of games. It doesn't make or mount images though - it creates a key from the data streams the game uses when accessing the CD. I haven't tried it in earnest yet, but conceptually it looks good.

 

[Liver]

I tried Game Jack today and I could not get it to work properly. It was the free / trial version so no money lost.

However there are two programs with similar names

Game Jack is what I tried.

And then Game Jackal is what you pointed out.

Liver

 

[Liver]

Quick bump for differentiation.

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

I use Nero for ripping the mini-images and Daemon Tools for mounting them.

 

[Pegun]

I use alcohol for all my mounting needs, and when the game blacklists it (ie civ 4) you can get hiding software for it.