Manage disc images anywhere with Passcape ISO Burner

It’s generally very easy to work with ISO files on a modern PC. Archiving programs can extract their contents, mastering software will burn them to disc, even Windows has offered basic support since Windows 7.

If you sometimes work on other people’s PCs, though, it’s wise to bring your own ISO application with the portable Passcape ISO Burner.

The program is very compact, just a single 348KB executable, no adware or other hassles. Simply launch it and a wizard presents you with four options.

The first directly burns an ISO (both 9660 and 13346, UDF) to CD or DVD. You get a couple of optional settings ("Enable buffer under-run protection" and "Quick erase") but otherwise this works exactly as you’d expect.

If you’re using this on someone else’s system, and have a problem, you can choose to burn the image with an external burning program. Passcape ISO Burner then opens whatever is associated with the ISO extension, and tries to pass it the file.

The program can also unpack an ISO image to a folder, useful if you just need to browse its contents.

The most advanced function will try to create a bootable USB drive from your image, as long as it has the necessary boot information. You get to choose whether you target PC is BIOS or UEFI-based (there’s an "I don’t know" option, if you’re not sure).

None of this is too surprising, and you probably have far more powerful programs already installed on your own system. Still, Passcape ISO Burner provides some useful features and is extremely easy to use, and it might be handy if you occasionally need to work with ISO files on other PCs.