Positive

---

• User friendly interface
• Simple to create and mount Virtual CDs
• Virtual CD client is simple to install
• Very stable – not a single software or OS crash throughout our review.
• Handles RAW sector reading, unreadable sectors, CD geometry data and so on.
• Virtual burner writes as quick as it can accept and write data to HDD.
• Virtual burner handles most popular disc formats and burning applications.
• Capable of editing existing images and virtual CDs.
• Can create Virtual DVD-RAM from physical DVD-RAM and vice versa with read/write file systems such as FAT32, UDF1.5 and UDF2.0, while still retaining the ability to modify data on the virtual or physical DVD-RAM copy made. 
• Smart Virtual CD feature allows use of virtual CDs to be placed on discs or USB media and accessed on PCs that may not have Virtual CD installed.
• Ability to create user-defined DVD capacities up to 17.5GB. 
• DVD-RAM of user defined capacity works effectively as a virtual hard disk.
• File and Terminal server editions are straight forward to install
• Terminal server handles multiple users without issue, even where one client wrote to the same drive letter as another client used for reading another disc.
• Network Management Server provides a useful way of distributing discs to clients in the office without physically handing out discs to everyone.

Negative

---

• Virtual Burner lacks a few common CD/DVD burner features such as multi-session burning (except DVD-RAM) and CD Extra burning.
• Virtual Burner does not support over-burning of virtual CD-R media.
• Unable to format Virtual DVD-RAM in UDF 1.5 or 2.0 format in Windows XP, even with LG’s DVD-RAM format utility that works with most DVD-RAM drives. 
• Physical DVD-RAM drive not locked while writing Virtual DVD-RAM to disc.
• Virtual CD limits sharing of a virtual drive to one connection maximum.
• Virtual CD Terminal Server installation requires reboot for the virtual drives to be recognised, from our testing.
• Virtual CD client, FS and NMS require reboot after software update.

Conclusion

---

Virtual CD took us by surprise on its vast array of features and especially its unique virtual burner capability, which is present even in its regular client version.  Many of the advanced features are hidden by default with a simple tick option to reveal them.  As a result, this keeps the windows clean and simple by default to make it user friendly, even for those who may have never written discs before and like to get things done in as few clicks as possible. 

The File Server and Terminal Server editions certainly make it ideal for business, Internet cafés and even educational use.  For example, where software is frequently distributed throughout a corporation on disc, such as product testing from disc, CD presentations and so on, it does away with the need of handling and copying of lots of discs, which not only saves money on getting new discs and replacing lost discs and worn out drives, but also reduces the amount of waste thrown out when the discs are no longer of any use.   Virtual CD is also definitely one of the most stable software applications we have encountered so far, with not a single crash, let alone any system instability throughout our extensive review.

The Virtual burner feature is definitely something quite unique and provides a range of useful features.  For corporations, it can take the place of physical burners in workstations, such that virtual burned discs are stored in a central location where they need to be approved before they are written to physical media.  For software developers that need to prepare and test installation discs, they can burn these to the virtual burner and distribute the virtual discs on the network with software testers without the tedious process of writing and distributing physical discs.  For education, it can take the place of physical burners and discs when learning to prepare and write discs. 

Those who regularly use small hard disks, multiple small partitions or physical DVD-RAM media for scrap data would be able to replace these with virtual DVD-RAM discs.  These provide most of the benefits of using individual disk partitions, along with password protection and encryption.  From our testing, the performance is much like directly using the hard disks the test images were stored on, especially when it came to handling 1,000’s of small files.  If virtual DVD-RAM discs are created and formatted with the standard 4.7GB size, they can be easily transferred to physical DVD-RAM media, without affecting the read/write capability to the media file system.

The only negative things we encountered with the software are only minor, such as the inability to burn the CD Extra disc type to the Virtual Burner (at least using Nero 7), multiple sessions or over-burn Virtual CD-R media.  However, the CD Extra type disc is a seldom used format, multisession discs can be avoided by simply writing the entire disc again and over-burning is not something most physical discs and drives are designed to handle anyway. The only issue where problems may arise is where Virtual CD does not lock the DVD-RAM drive during the write process, however, if one plans overwriting a DVD-RAM that contains an existing read/write file system, a workaround is to erase the DVD-RAM first. 

Finally, there is no mandatory online product activation or need to make any manual activation by telephone during the installation of the product.  Instead, the only time a product key needs to be validated online is when one goes on to the company website to obtain a product update and does not need to be carried out on a PC that has Virtual CD installed. 

To Sum up, this is what we would say:

Virtual CD is a very practical alternative to a physical optical drive and CD/DVD burner in many scenarios, does what H+H Software claims it can do, well featured and is very stable and easy to use.

Feel free to comment on this review below or on the forum in this thread.

Introduction