Virtual CloneDrive
This is a bit of a boutique application, but I have to pass along a recommendation for Virtual CloneDrive. It could definitely save your bacon at some point, especially in this age of drive-less netbooks.
Which, given that I have traded down to the old VAIO notebook, may be an imminent purchase for me. (They’re definitely hot in Turkey, but with the 50%-100% tekno-markup here and the clumsy/terrible localized Turkish keyboard, it’s a smarter call to wait and get one domestically.)
It’s Windows freeware (loopback mounting in the Linux world doesn’t require external software, just some console-foo, and it’s kind of built into every aspect of Mac’s .DMG and .ISO treatment), and it won’t get in your way much.
To summarize its function, if you have or make an ISO disc image of like, say, a DVD or a program install CD, you can make the image file itself look like a physical disc in a drive without having to burn it. This might allow for installing programs off a USB hard drive, especially when the target machine doesn’t have a drive to use.
Application Screen
Virtual Drive in Action
“Virtual Sheep” just means to make the drive icon in Explorer a cartoon sheep so that the virtual drive doesn’t get mixed up with real drives. Simple and solid, and it allows a maximum of eight drives mounted virtually at once. Very fast.
The installer also didn’t offer me a fun Swahili translator toolbar or a download of OpenOffice, so definitely a plus there.