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Many companies today are selling smaller and smaller laptops with all sorts of gadgets on them to make them popular and increase sales. But many people don't realise that one of the gadgets they've taken out is one that's most handy, an optical drive. Now before you bring that stamp sized laptop back, remember that the world is full of people who love to hack their ways around complicated issues. And this particular issue, is not overly complicated. Here's a quick way that will get you around this issue, MOST of the time... (yes this article is longer than you'd hoped, but honestly, its not hard)

There are a number of different ways to get a compact disk onto a computer without an optical drive. You do need one in the beginning, there's no psychic way to transfer the disk, but after that, you wont need one again until you have another disk you want to move over.

So here's a list of what you'll need to pull off this little hack.

- Your mini-laptop (the one without a cd-rom drive, duh!)
- Another computer (one with a cd-rom drive and some usb ports)
- A flash drive larger than 1gb (1 gb will work more often than not)
- Patience


To start, you need a program that will allow you to make what are called 'disk images',
these 'images' are just that... a picture. To be exact its a copy of the information on the disk at a particular point in time, kinda like a real picture... except its data... and not people.... you get the picture.

There are a number of programs that allow you to make these images.
PowerISO, DaemonTools, MagicISO, Alcohol%120, and many.. many more, in fact  the internet is filled with them, and chances are your computer came with one that was meant to burn the images to new disks.

Personally, I use PowerISO because its free version allows you to do practically everything you may want to do with a disk, and a little more, so it gets thumbs up from me.

This is where its going to get a little technical, but don't worry, I'm going to hold your hand and explain everything in detail so that when you're done you can have that merit badge of geekyness.

Ok, so at this point, you've got your spiffy "My Collection of Cool Games" disk handy and another computer, yes you do need another computer for this, unless you've got a external cd-rom drive handy... in which case stop reading now because..... your already done???

So first install PowerISO on both computers. Your going to use different program functionality for each different computer, so it must be on both computers. This is where the flash drive can come in handy, if you have the internet (and you do cause you're reading this) you can download PowerISO on both computers at the same time... if you don't have wireless or another way to download the program onto both computers, put it on that flash drive you've got there and transfer it over.

If that's a task that boggles your mind, again, stop reading and consult your closest 12 year old.  :)

After installing PowerISO on both computers, your going to begin what we in the geek world call 'making a disk image'... So stick your copy of 'My Collection of Cool Games" into the computer with the cd-rom drive (as if that wasn't blatantly obvious)... and open PowerISO (click the part that says use unregistered).

WARNING: What your about to do IS illegal in some places, Some people will tell you that copying disks is not illegal if you own a copy of it... but they're wrong, it's still illegal.

Now that we've got that out of the way, towards the top of the program is a button that says "Copy", its a picture of a disk with and arrow pointing to the generic windows logo for a hard drive. Click that button. It should open a menu that gives you a few options. Select the button that says ".iso file" and make sure you have the proper source drive selected in the top drop down menu. There is no particular reason I suggest you select .iso, I just have foud that it is accepted by the geek culture as a standard format for disk images. Click the "..." button when you're ready and select the option for your desktop, or another folder of your choosing, this is where the program will save the image of the disk.

This is one area where things can go wrong...

If your disk contains any strict copy protection or any other things to prevent people from enjoying their media the way they want to, PowerISO may stop working and stop your fun there. There are other ways to get around the copy protection, but I will not be going into details on that here, as I believe that it would cause more trouble for me, than good for you.

After PowerISO is done with the disk, plug in your flash drive and copy the new disk image from where ever you saved it, on to the flash drive. Then plug the flash drive into your mini notebook, and copy it somewhere on to it, such as an "Images" folder off of your main C: drive, or another folder of your choosing.

And now, you shuold stop to enjoy a moment of accomplishment, you have just broken the law. The police have been notified and are on their way. Joke. You can also be assured that 25% of the complex computer stuff is behind you and that you only have 75% more to go (hehe).Back to work....

When you open PowerISO again, you'll see all sorts of buttons along the top. But this time, we're going to be paying attention to another one...

And this is where its going to get REALLY complicated.

PowerISO and many other disk mounting programs have different ways of 'mounting' (yes mounting, and no, we're not going for a horse ride..) what your mounting is the disk image to a virtual drive. To de-complicate the overyly complicated, PowerISO tricks your computer into believing that there is a cd-rom drive, when there really isn't. (Get it? We're tricking your computer!!)

So to direct your attetion away from my clever writing and back to PowerISO, you'll see that they've cleverly made a button that says "Mount".. (click it).

This is going to bring up another menu and allow you to do all sorts of complicated auto-run settings and set how many drives it's lying to your computer about. Make sure that in the number of drives is set to one. You can have a few if you'd like, but you only really need one.

Now in that same menu, you'll see something like "Mount Image to Drive D: <no media>" or something like that. This is the virtual drive that you set up. So next we have to tell PowerISO what disk to use, so click that, and navigate your way around the innards of your computer to where ever you saved that disk image from before, select it, and click "Open".

Thats it.

If your disk has an auto-run feature, wait a moment and it will likely start up, if not, dont be afraid to go into "My Computer" to figure it out.

To use another disk, do the same things all over again, you only need to mount the disk that you want to use at that time, so dont be afraid of the "Unmount Drive [D:]" part in the PowerISO "Mount" menu.

One other tip, if you are using PowerISO, chances are that it installed what are called shell-scripts when it installed. These scripts allow you to right click on any disk image and mount/unmount them anywhere. So if you want to mount a disk thats on your desktop, right click it, navigate to the PowerISO menu, and mount/umount to your hearts desire.

Hope this helped.

Just as an asside... not to encourage movie piracy or any other illegal activities, but this method works well for DVD's too! (providing they aren't copy protected)

Coles Notes Version:
1.Copy disk onto computer with optical drive using PowerISO
2.Copy new disk image to computer using flash drive
3. Mount using PowerISO, and enjoy.

Update on Saturday, June 27, 2009 at 2:24PM by alexpwalsh

One thing to add.... DVD's tend to be larger than 1GB, so a 1GB flash drive simply won't do for those.... Splurge and buy that 4GB for $10!!! lol