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| Post Number: 1
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xoben 
Group: Super Administrators
Posts: 849
Joined: Nov. 2003
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Posted on: Nov. 13 2003,09:29 |
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In common use, an "ISO" is a file that contains the complete image of a disc. Such files are often used when transferring CD-ROM images over the Internet. Depending on who you're talking to, "ISO" may refer to all disc image files or only certain kinds.
Going by the more restrictive definition, an "ISO" is created by copying an entire disc, from sector 0 to the end, into a file. Because the image file contains "cooked" 2048-byte sectors and nothing else, it isn't possible to store anything but a single data track in this fashion. Audio tracks, mixed-mode discs, CD+G, multisession, and other fancy formats can't be represented.
To work around this deficiency, software companies developed their own formats that *could* store diverse formats. Corel developed CIF, which is still in use by Roxio's Easy CD Creator. (What does CIF mean? Nobody knows, though "Corel Image Format" is as good a definition as any.) Jeff Arnold's CDRWIN created them as "BIN" files, with a separate "cue sheet" that described the contents. You can unpack a BIN/CUE combo with UltraISO.
A ".DAT" file could be most anything, but usually it's a video file pulled off of a VideoCD. A program at http://www.vcdgear.com/ can convert .DAT to .MPG, and recording programs like Nero can record them directly.
A ".ISO" file that contains an image of an ISO-9660 filesystem can be manipulated in a number of ways: it can be written to a CD-ROM; mounted as a device with the Linux "loopback" filesystem (e.g. "mount ./cdimg.iso /mnt/test -t iso9660 -o loop"); copied to a hard drive partition and mounted under UNIX; or viewed with WinImage (section (6-2-2)). There is no guarantee, however, that a ".ISO" file contains ISO-9660 filesystem data. And it is quite common to hear people refer to things as "ISO" which aren't.
A ".SUB" file appears to contain subchannel data. Some programs pass these around in addition to one of the above formats.
We now have many different file extensions, including ISO, BIN, IMG, CIF, FCD, NRG, GCD, PO1, C2D, CUE, CIF, CD, and GI. UltraISO can open and manipulate just about any disc image format.
(The rest of this section is a philosophical rant, and can safely be skipped. This is intended to be more illustrative than factual, and any relation to actual events is strictly coincidental.)
The term "ISO" is ostensibly an abbreviation of "ISO-9660 disc image", which is itself somewhat suspect. ISO-9660 is a standard that defines the filesystem most often used on CD-ROM. It does not define a disc image format. "ISO-9660 filesystem image" would be more appropriate.
When you capture or generate a CD-ROM image, you have to call it something. When a CD-ROM was generated from a collection of files into an ISO-9660 filesystem image, it was written into a file with an extension of ".ISO". This image file could then be written to a CD-ROM. As it happens, the generated image files were no different in structure from the images that could be extracted from other CD-ROMs, so to keep things simple the extracted disc images were also called ".ISO".
(Some programs used the more appropriate ".IMG", but unfortunately that was less common.)
This meant that, whether you extracted a data track from a disc written with the HFS filesystem or the ISO-9660 filesystem, it was labeled ".ISO". This makes as much sense as formatting a 1.4MB PC floppy for HFS, creating an image, and calling it a "FAT12 disk image" because such floppies are usually formatted with FAT. It didn't really matter though, because no matter what was in the file, the software used the same procedure to write it to CD-R.
As a result of this filename extension convention, any file that contained a sector-by-sector CD-ROM image was referred to as an "ISO file". When CD recorders hit The Big Time and many people started swapping image files around, the newcomers didn't know that there was a distinction between one type of disc image and another, and started referring to *any* sort of disc image as an "ISO".
These days it's not altogether uncommon to see messages about "making an ISO" of an audio CD, which makes no sense at all.
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| Post Number: 2
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Hamster
Group: Members
Posts: 2
Joined: Jan. 2004
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Posted on: Jan. 11 2004,17:39 |
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I have yet to be able to open any *.cif file that Roxio makes with UltraIso what gives?
Thanks
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| Post Number: 3
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MashiBaby
Unregistered
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Posted on: Feb. 01 2004,16:44 |
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one question, when i want to burn something to a cd which file should i convert to like for example i use nero burning rom, do i convert the cue file or the bin file and burn it with nero? or does it matter? 
thanks in advance
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| Post Number: 4
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Sniper
Unregistered
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Posted on: Feb. 03 2004,20:18 |
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| Quote (Guest @ Feb. 01 2004,21:44) | one question, when i want to burn something to a cd which file should i convert to like for example i use nero burning rom, do i convert the cue file or the bin file and burn it with nero? or does it matter?
thanks in advance |
You don't have to convert either the BIN or CUE file if your wanting to burn it to CD with Nero.. Just load the CUE file when asked by Nero where your image is you want to burn.
The first line in the CUE will have the name of your image file if the CUE & BIN are in same directory as each other.. If they are in seperate directories then the first line in the CUE with have the full path to the image. You can open the CUE with notepad to see it points to the proper location & file.
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| Post Number: 5
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MashiBaby
Unregistered
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Posted on: Feb. 06 2004,03:19 |
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thank you for the clarification, but what if i have a file over 700MB, can i still burn it on a 700MB disc or on an 800MB disc?
like i have a bin file around 760MB can i still burn it on 700MB cause when i convert it with UltraISO to nero format the files are smaller
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| Post Number: 6
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helping hand
Unregistered
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Posted on: Feb. 07 2004,03:16 |
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| Quote (Guest @ Feb. 06 2004,08:19) | thank you for the clarification, but what if i have a file over 700MB, can i still burn it on a 700MB disc or on an 800MB disc?
like i have a bin file around 760MB can i still burn it on 700MB cause when i convert it with UltraISO to nero format the files are smaller |
well, that depends what data the .bin file contains. if it is a game or just plain data you can forget it, 760 mb will not fit on a 700mb cd. however if the .bin file is a vcd/svcd movie, it might just work. due to the different format you can burn up to 800 mb vcd/svcd on a 700 mb movie.
before I burn I normally check the image in daemon tools (mount on a virtual drive) to make sure everything is ok and the cd is worth burning.
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| Post Number: 7
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MashiBaby
Unregistered
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Posted on: Feb. 08 2004,00:15 |
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so there are no way i can burn it on a 700MB cd if it's a game then? where can i find this daemon's tool you're talking about?
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| Post Number: 8
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BlooD
Unregistered
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Posted on: Feb. 08 2004,17:39 |
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i can't seem to be able to mount a bin file to daemon tools. It is loo large to burn to dosc, so i am trying to run the game from Daemon tools. should i convert it to iso?
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| Post Number: 9
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xoben
Group: Super Administrators
Posts: 849
Joined: Nov. 2003
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Posted on: Feb. 09 2004,08:32 |
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| Quote (Guest @ Feb. 08 2004,22:39) | | i can't seem to be able to mount a bin file to daemon tools. It is loo large to burn to dosc, so i am trying to run the game from Daemon tools. should i convert it to iso? |
ISO image will not accept copy-protected information, DO NOT convert BIN to ISO in this case.
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| Post Number: 10
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xoben
Group: Super Administrators
Posts: 849
Joined: Nov. 2003
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Posted on: Feb. 09 2004,08:35 |
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| Quote (Guest @ Feb. 08 2004,05:15) | | where can i find this daemon's tool you're talking about? |
Please download a copy from http://www.daemon-tools.cc .
PS: Another product named SoftDisc from us has integreated daemon-tools and more usful features, you can get it here:
http://www.ezbsystems.com/softdisc/download.htm.
Edited by xoben on Feb. 09 2004,08:36
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