ISO files are basically images of CDs and DVDs. They work as both a backup and distribution medium for CDs and DVDs, and with the right software can even be mounted as virtual discs and accessed as if a physical disc had been burned and inserted into your computer’s DVD drive.

Successive versions of Windows have got better at dealing with ISO images – Windows 7 users can both create ISOs from existing CDs and DVDs, and burn them back to CD or DVD, for example – but if you want more advanced features or are using an older version of Windows, you’ll need third-party software.

ISO Workshop offers four tools: extraction, creation, conversion and burning. Extraction allows you to retrieve files from ISO and other image-based formats (including DMG, CUE and BIN). Click Backup to convert a physical disc into an ISO or CUE file for backup or distribution purposes. Convert is where you can convert from a wide range of other formats to ISO or BIN, while Burn allows you to take an ISO file and burn it back to CD, DVD or Blu-ray disc.

Each tool is pretty simplistic, but easy to grasp. One missing feature is the ability to physically mount an ISO file as if it were a CD – if you want this functionality, add another free tool like Virtual CloneDrive alongside ISO Workshop to get all the functionality you need.