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Alcohol 120%

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Alcohol 120%
Developer(s)Alcohol Software
Stable release
1.9.6.4719 / November 20, 2006
Operating systemMicrosoft Windows
TypeCD/DVD emulation, recording software
LicenseDemoware
Websitewww.alcohol-soft.com

Alcohol 120% is an optical disc authoring program and disk image emulator created by Alcohol Soft. It can burn CDs and DVDs and emulate ISO images as virtual drives.

It can produce a backup of a CD by either using the CD or an image of it. The software can burn more than one CD or DVD at the same time. It bypasses some copy prevention schemes, and supports image file types such as MDS, CCD, BIN/CUE, ISO, CDI, BWT, BWI, BWS, BWA, and others. However certain copy protection require a burner capable of burning the copy protection. Alcohol does not back up CSS encrypted DVD-Video, due to legal reasons. It also has special options for PlayStation and PlayStation 2 file systems making the copy process of these discs a very easy task.

Alcohol 120% cannot burn CDs in a traditional way (mastering). That is, you can't add files to a project and then burn them. You need to make a copy (image) of a physical CD or have one on your hard drive already, and thereafter burn.

Versions of this software are blacklisted by certain software manufacturers due to its use in defeating copy prevention schemes. There are, however, 3rd party pieces of software are available that attempt to bypass the blacklistings. On a Windows PC, this can involve modification of the system registry, tools that do this enclude Anti-blaxx and CureRom.

There is also a version without the burning engine, called 'Alcohol 52%'. It can create virtual CD/DVD-ROM drives and run the backup, making a physical copy of the disc unnecessary. Alcohol 52% supports up to 31 virtual drives, which can operate at over 200 times the speed of the conventional CD-ROM drive. Legal restrictions prevent this software from producing backups of DVDs that employ the content-scrambling system. A free version of this software was released mid-2006, however, it is considered adware by some due to the contained toolbar.

See also