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I have a Sony P-Series netbook (VGN-P11Z) with no optical drive. It has an option to burn recovery DVDs with an external DVD drive.

I don't have an external DVD drive but would like these DVDs just in case (if I need to use them I'll have to buy/borrow an external DVD drive).

Is there a free alternative to Phantom Burner?

Or, is there another way I can create/download the recovery ISOs?

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The only free product I could find was TotalMounter but I hear it is buggy. Could be worth a go though.

There is also a commercial product called Virtual CD which has a demo and this could be enough if you are not planning on using it again.

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  • why I won't try TotalMounter: "Additionally, KernSafe TotalMounter has also provide virtual write technology into iSCSI Initiator and INetDisk Client, so that you can copy files into a read-only drive and do not affect the other peoples." <- What???
    – MetaGuru
    Sep 2, 2010 at 18:06
  • To be honest I wouldn't recommend TotalMounter at all, it's just that it is the only free program I could find that claims to emulate a DVD writer. Personally I think that the demo of Virtual CD would be a better option. And at €29.95 it's not even that expensive to buy.
    – James P
    Sep 3, 2010 at 9:08
  • I could never get TotalMounter to work at all. It's the only free virtual burner I've seen, but it's never worked for me.
    – afrazier
    Feb 25, 2011 at 1:43
  • TotalMounter 2.0.13.1204 just worked for me on Win7x64 creating a System Recovery DIsk; however I used TotalMounter to create a mounted image then I used MagicIso to burn an iso from the mounted TotalMounter and that iso loaded fine in Rufus to create the USB disk. The img file TotalMounter created I couldn't use anywhere but in TotalMounter.
    – 9swampy
    Sep 28, 2016 at 1:44
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Virtual CD is software only for mounting images, not to write to virtual image (drive) as to regular DVD drive.

You need commercial software like Phantom Burner. It costs 30 USD, but I recommend this software because it can WROTE virtual CD-RW, DVD-RW and even write 25GB BlueRay (BD-RW) discs.

There is also free KernSafe TotalMounter software emulating DVDRW drive but... it is buggy - I could make it working, as previous people, either. So it is DVD virtual writer, but actually not working for instance on 64-bit Windows 2008 Server R2 ;-)

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Alcohol 120% is said to have emulate burners, but couldn't find (much of any) details on their website.

I'd try Phantom Burner, or Virtual-CD 10 over TotalMounter which seems to have pretty scary reviews.

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You might take a look at this one. I haven't used it but it's free and users give it 4.5 / 5 stars.

Virtual CloneDrive 5.4.4.0

http://download.cnet.com/Virtual-CloneDrive/3000-20432_4-173879.html

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    Your answer suggest a program that can only read ISO files, it can't write them (the virtual drive is ROM, not RAM - the question asks about a virtual CD/DVD RAM drive).
    – hakre
    Jul 5, 2015 at 9:59

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