WinZip 30 is out with reworked file associations and faster startup, three consumer tiers that are all billed yearly, AES-256 encryption and file wiping as the product line, a 21 day trial without a card, and 30 days to ask for a refund.

DVDFab Virtual Drive is a free virtual drive that mounts up to eighteen DVD, Blu-ray and Ultra HD drives at once and reads eight image formats. It once carried the name ExplorerFab, and version 2.0.0.5 is the package on the download page now.

BurnAware 19.4 shipped on 17 September 2026 and gathers twenty burning tasks behind twenty buttons. The free edition covers data, audio and video discs, ISO work and whole-disc backup for personal use. Premium adds transcoding and spanning, Professional adds recovery and multisession burners.

lzop compresses files through the LZO library, ships under the GPL, and puts speed ahead of ratio on both sides of the job. Version 1.04 defaults to level 3 and keeps the source file, which suits backup archives.

BZip3 compresses text and source code without loss, pushes the block ceiling from 1 MiB up to 511 MiB, adds a Lempel-Ziv predictor ahead of the transform, swaps in context mixing for entropy coding, and ships six command line tools.

ImgBurn is a free disc burning tool from LIGHTNING UK! that splits the work into five modes: reading a disc, building an image, writing one, verifying the result and testing the drive. It handles twelve image formats plus audio and video discs, and the final release dates from 2013.

gBurner is a disc burning and image handling tool for Windows in which burning data, audio and video, editing and converting images, and building a bootable USB all live in one program. The free version is open to personal and commercial use alike.

A long-standing name in disc authoring, with the 2026 edition covering data, audio and video discs for burning, copying and imaging, 256-bit encryption with adjustable data redundancy built in, and Windows 11 support, sold as paid commercial software.

XZ Utils is free general purpose data compression software built on LZMA2, producing the .xz format that source packages and firmware images so often use, with a liblzma library other programs can call directly.

A virtual drive and disc image tool whose free tier already mounts ISO and other common images as virtual devices, and can turn a disc, an audio CD or a folder into an image file for the archive.

A built in Windows wizard that turns a pile of files into one self extracting EXE or a CAB without installing anything, with eight command line switches and automatic cleanup of the temporary files after it runs.

A small utility that opens, converts, burns and copies disc images without a manual, costs nothing for personal use, and stays out of the way the rest of the year.

Optical and raw disk images mount as ordinary drives with a letter, open in the file manager, and unmount without a trace. Read only mounting protects the evidence, and a RAM disk is faster than any physical one.

A small installer, a quick start and no attempt to sell you something else: Zipware handles the common archive formats, adds a multi engine scan to the right click menu, and stays free for business use too.

Optical drives have not retired yet, and the built in burning in Windows is barely enough. This free tool turns the job into a wizard: pick a type, drop files, start. Images and disc copies included.