OSFMount

[Abarbarian]

I needed to open up a disk image I have on my hard drive.I did not want to burn a DVD or CD and I do not have anyof the right software installed on my PC. So I went hunting and found OSFMount. This is a free program which allows you to mount local disk image files on the hard drive or to ram.
I downloaded the application, which is only 1.3 MB and installed it which took about three minutes. A minute later, I had mounted my disk image and access the information I needed.
This looks like a pretty neat piece of freeware and could come in useful for people who play lots of games. As you can load the disk images to ram providing you have enough of course.

http://www.osforensics.com/tools/mount-disk-images.html

"OSFMount also supports the creation of RAM disks, basically a disk mounted into RAM. This generally has a large speed benefit over using a hard disk. As such this is useful with applications requiring high speed disk access, such a database applications, games (such as game cache files) and browsers (cache files). A second benefit is security, as the disk contents are not stored on a physical hard disk (but rather in RAM) and on system shutdown the disk contents are not persistent. "

 

[Silverhazesurfer]

Daemon tools also makes a lightweight version of their tools software. It works in much the same way. It will load ISO images for installation or operation.

http://www.daemon-tools.cc/eng/products/dtLite

I also use Power ISO. They have a trial version that has limitations. I have the paid for version that functions very well for creating ISO and DAA images. Very simple to rip a CD/DVD and place it into an image.

http://www.poweriso.com/download.htm

The unregistered version will display a dialog prompts you to register, and you can not create or edit image files greater than 300MB with the unregistered version. To remove these limitations, please register.