At times, you might need to mount an ISO file to view the contents of the ISO file, or may be, you might want to mount a Windows OS ISO file to quickly copy ISO contents to create a bootable USB flash drive. Though Windows 7 doesn’t support ISO mounting out of the box, there are some good free utilities to mount an ISO file.

In general, one needs to burn the ISO file to CD/DVD to view and use the contents of the ISO file. But if you don’t want to burn the ISO to a CD/DVD, you can use third-party tools such as Virtual CloneDrive to easily mount ISO files.

Virtual CloneDrive is a completely free and easy-to-use ISO image mounting software for Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. It can easily mount .CCD, .BIN, .UDF, .ISO, .IMG, and .DVD files.

How to use it:

Download and install the software from here.

Right-click on the ISO image file that you want to mount and select Mount (Virtual CloneDrive (drive letter)).

Now, you can see the new virtual drive in the explorer (My Computer).

Example:

For example, if you want to mount a Windows 7/Windows 8 ISO file to copy installation files, you would perform following steps:

Step 1: Navigate to the drive or folder that contains Windows 7 ISO file.

Step 2: Right-click on the ISO file, and select Mount (Virtual CloneDrive (drive letter)) option. Also notice the drive letter provided in the option.

Step 3: Now open Windows Explorer and open the virtual drive to see the ISO file contents. You can now copy all the contents of the drive to your desired drive or folder.