The question now is if there is a way to lock the DVD drive in Windows Explorer. Locking meaning that it will not be accessed in any way when a user opens Windows Explorer, a file browser or any other means of accessing files on his computer system. Ideally the program should be able to determine direct DVD access and allow that from happening.

The only viable solution so far is to create a disk image of the DVD in the drive and mount it using a software that emulates CD drives. This is however not a perfect solution. It would be much easier to have a on and off button for the DVD drive or a program running that would automatically perform the operation. Actually there is one additional solution which would involve removing the DVD from the drive whenever it is not needed and putting it back in whenever it is needed.

Question is: Do you know of a program that can lock the DVD drive so that the DVD will not be accessed when accessing Windows Explorer?

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Optical drives are sensible and can break easily if enough pressure is applied. CD / DVD Drive Locker puts an end to this fear by locking selected optical drives of a computer system. The software program is easy to use. Just select the optical drives that should be locked and move them to the list of locked drives with the click of a button. Unlocking works practically the same.

While kids – or more specifically parents – are the main target for the application it might also make sense under other circumstances. Could be useful to lock the optical laptop drive to avoid that the drive opens accidentally.

Credit goes to Instant Fundas for finding the application. They missed to include a link to the application though. CD / DVD Drive Locker is compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 2000.

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Virtual CloneDrive is a software that emulates up to eight virtual CD and DVD drives on the system. Each appears in Windows Explorer with its own drive letter and the user can perform the usual operations such as installing software from or exploring the CD or DVD that has been mounted.

The software works by adding two new entries to the right-click context menu in Windows Explorer that only appear when right-clicking a virtual CD drive. That makes mounting and unmounting new images overly complicated. I liked how Daemon Tools provided a system tray icon that could be used to mount and unmount images easily.

Several popular image formats are supported including iso, dvd and img but it does not support all the image formats that were supported by Daemon Tools Lite.

The software has a low computer memory consumption while it is running. It used up only 3 Megabytes of computer memory while emulating one virtual drive. Raising that number did not have a huge impact on the memory consumption.

The application had to be started again to add or remove virtual CD drives from the system. Mounting and working with those CD and DVD images on the other hand was uncomplicated. The application lacks an interface that is accessible while using it. It would also be nice to be able to mount images by right-clicking them or loading them from the program’s interface. Currently the only other option available is to assign the file extensions to Virtual CloneDrive so that a double-click would mount them.

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