Windows 8 can create virtual optical drives themselves

According to information from MSDN, Windows 8 will directly support the mount of iso files into virtual drives. Thus users will be easier to access data from ISO files without having to burn or install 3rd party software.

To use this feature, users simply need to access the folder containing the iso file in Explorer , then double-click the file to mount, or select ' Mount ' in the Actions tab.

After mounting, a virtual CDROM / DVD drive will be created with the contents of the ISO file. This virtual drive is exactly the same as the real drive, the only difference is that the data is the ISO file and the reading speed will depend on the hard drive speed.

When you no longer need to use the user, just right-click on the virtual drive and select ' eject ', the virtual drive will automatically disappear.

Besides supporting ISO files, Windows 8 also supports mount VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) files, which are the virtual drive files of virtual machines running on Hyper-V and Virtual PC platforms. Mounting VHD files is like ISO files, the only difference is that Windows will create a new virtual hard disk instead of the virtual CDROM / DVD disk as in the case of mount the ISO file.