PowerISO is a very powerful image file processing tool & a disc image utility that can open, create, edit, burn, compress, encrypt, mount and extract ISO files. Once Power ISO is installed in your computer it gives you the option to create more than 20 virtual drives on which you can mount your ISO files.

What is an ISO file?

An ISO file is also called ISO image, that contains exact copy of data found on an optical disc, like a CD or DVD. Its main purpose is to back up the optical discs or for distributing large file sets that are meant to burned to an optical disc. You can make ISO file of any data like files & folders, the way you create zip files using Winrar.

When you insert CD/DVD again-and-again there is possibility that they may fail to run because of the scratches caused by your disc drive's reader. So that's why DVDs or CDs are copied as ISO files which you can save into your computer and can run as many times as you want. ISO files are actually virtual DVDs or CDs.

The other benefit of ISO file is that it saves your optical disk drive or DVD drive from running again and again, hence increase its lifetime. For example, you may have played games on your computer which run from your optical disk drive means you have to insert DVD each time to play those games. Now if you create ISO image of that game you can play without inserting DVD into your computer's optical disk drive.

In order to protect your ISO files from unauthorized access you can set password as well. Once your ISO file is password protected it can't be extracted or run without password.

In this tutorial we will cover following topics:

How To Set Power ISO Drive
How To Mount/Run .ISO File
How To Extract .ISO File
How To Create .ISO File
How To Set Password On Power ISO File
How To Change The Password Of .ISO File

How To Set Power ISO Drives

Before you mount your .ISO file you must set the PowerISO drives.
Here you can see that there is no PowerISO drive.

How To Open, Extract & Create .ISO File In Windows

To set the Power ISO drives right-click on any file or folder in your computer. Here we have right-clicked on our DVD Drive.
Hover over PowerISO.
Hover over "Set Number of Drives".
Click "1 Drives". You can create more than 20 drives.

How To Open, Extract & Create .ISO File In Windows | Learn How To Use Power ISO

Now open your "My Computer" or "My PC".
You will see a golden icon of Power ISO drive.
Your PowerISO drive is ready to mount .ISO files.
In the next step you will learn how to mount .ISO files.

How To Mount/Run .ISO File

In the above step you have learned how to set Power ISO drives. Now in this step you will learn how to mount or load .ISO files into your PowerISO drive.

Right-click on your .ISO file.
Hover over PowerISO.
Click "Mount image to Drive [:]<No media> ".

You can see that the PowerISO is mounted with the .ISO file.
You can directly open it or do right click and open.
If there is a software you can install directly from PowerISO drive and if you want to copy to your computer or USB you can Copy & Paste.
Remember that you can only copy the data of .ISO file. You cannot edit or delete.

In order to mount another .ISO file you have to unmount the Power ISO drive.
Right-click on your PowerISO drive.
Hover over PowerISO.
Click "Unmount Drive [:]".

How To Extract .ISO File

You must have extracted or unzipped Winrar files. Similarly you can extract the .ISO files as well. Extracting .ISO files is one way to copy the data of .ISO files in your computer.

Right-click on your .ISO file.
Hover over PowerISO.
Click "Extract Here".
There are two more options for extracting i.e "Extract to" and "Extract here using file names from folders".

How To Create .ISO File/Image

Right click on file, folder or DVD/CD of which you want to create .ISO image. If there are more than 1 file or folder select them first and then right-click.
Hover over PowerISO.
Click "Add to image file...".

Choose ".iso file".
Click "OK".

You can see that .ISO file has been created.

How To Set Password On .ISO File

Power ISO offers you the feature that you can protect your files with password. The password can only be created when you create .ISO image. Remember to set a password that you remember. In case if you forget the password it can't be recovered or modified.

Right-click on the file/folder/DVD of which you want to create .ISO image.
Hover over PowerISO.
Click "Add to image file...".

How To Open, Extract & Create .ISO File In Windows | Set Password On .ISO File

Choose ".iso file".
Click "Properties...".

Click "Advanced" tab.
Click "Enable password protection".
Enter your Password.
Click OK.

Your .ISO file is password protected now.
Click OK.

Click "OK".

Here you can see that the Power ISO is prompting for Password. The file is password protected.

How To Change Password Of .ISO File

Power ISO allows you to change the password of your .ISO file, but always remember that you can only change the password if you know your current password because without the current password you cannot access your password protected .ISO file.

Enter the current password of your .ISO file.
Click "File".
Click "Image Properties...".

Click "Advanced" tab.
Click "Changed password".
Enter your new password.
Click OK.

There are lot of other features that you can explore on PowerISO. Here we have covered some of its important and common features.
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