Theo
Thu Oct 18 03:58:52 PDT 2007
An ISO image (.iso) is a disk image of an ISO 9660 file
system. ISO 9660 is an international standard originally
devised for storing data on CD-ROM. More loosely, it refers
to any optical disc image, even a UDF image.
As is typical for disc images, in addition to the data files
that are contained in the ISO image, it also contains all
the filesystem metadata, including boot code, structures,
and attributes. All of this information is contained in a
single file. These properties make it an attractive
alternative to physical media for the distribution of
software that requires this additional information as it is
simple to retrieve over the Internet.
Some of the common uses include the distribution of
operating systems, such as Linux or BSD systems, and
LiveCDs. The ease of Internet transmission also makes the
.iso format a common format for distributing copies of video
games over peer-to-peer networks, such as BitTorrent or
DirectConnect.
Most CD/DVD authoring utilities can deal with ISO images:
producing them either by copying the data from existing
media or generating new ones from existing files, or using
them to create a copy on physical media. Most operating
systems (including Mac OS, Mac OS X, BSD, Linux, and Windows
with Microsoft Virtual CD-ROM panel) allow these images to
be mounted as if they were physical discs, making them
somewhat useful as a universal archive format.
Console emulators, such as ePSXe and PCSX2, and many other
emulators that read from CD/DVD, are able to run ISO or
BIN/CUE (and other similar formats) instead of running
directly from the CD drive. Better performance is achieved
by running an ISO since there is no waiting for the drive to
be ready and the hard drive I/O speed is many times faster
than the CD/DVD drive. Along with the ability to avoid disk
failure (Shattering) which may be expensive to rectify.
Tony Sperling <tony.sperling@db wrote:
> I don't know this particular format, but usually you can just rename it to
> *.ISO or whatever format your application requires to automatically include
> it in the filename dialog. The whole concept of the 'digital image' (ISO!)
> means any format will have to be digitally equal to any other format - i.e.
> it's just a name!
>
> The only instance I can think of for application specific digital formats
> would be if you were dealing with parts of ISO's that required one specific
> application to combine them into the original full size ISO - but I don't
> know if any such thing actually exist.
>
> Tony. . .
>
>
> "Robin" <no@spam.com> wrote in message
> news:ehP6ARUEIHA.4228@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
>> Thanks. And do you know anything but PowerISO that can handle .daa?
>>
>> "Jane C" <janecolman@invalid.iinet.net.au> wrote in message
>> news:CE89D5F0-15DD-4F25-9BDD-3908BFFA1E98@microsoft.com...
>>> Hi Robin,
>>>
>>> No, you would need a 3rd party application to burn an ISO image to disc.
>>>
http://infrarecorder.sourceforge.net/?page_id=5 is free and has a x64
>>> specific version.
>>> --
>>> Jane, not plain ;) 64 bit enabled :-)
>>> Batteries not included. Braincell on vacation ;-)
>>> MVP Windows Shell/User
>>
>
>