Why should I create ISO files at all? What are they for?

Question

Can for example, a Word document become an ISO file, and what can I do with it?

Answer 1

An ISO image (.iso) is a disk image of an ISO 9660 file system. 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, (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.

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 many other emulators that read from CD/DVD, are able to run ISO/BIN (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.

Answer 2

ISO files are typically used to make a 1 file backup of a CD or DVD (which contain many files). It will keep the folders in current form and is easier than dragging and dropping the contents of a disk to your hard drive. When you want to make a backup of, say, a CD, the copy program will "rip" the contents of your CD to your hard drive in iso form and, after you insert a fresh writable disk into the drive, write the files to the new disk.

Other than making an iso file that can be virtually "mounted" to your machine or if you want to make multiple copies of a disk over a period of time (not all at once), I personally don't see much of a reason for making an iso file.

Mounting an iso file that is saved on your hd through the use of software like Alcohol 120% will make your machine believe that you have the files on a cd in the cd drive when in fact the files are stored on your hd leaving your cd drive open for other uses.

If your looking to back up a series of documents, I believe the easier approach would be to simply burn the files onto a cd. As your question specifically states "a word document", I interpret your question as meaning a single document. Yes, you can make an iso with one file but I don't see that practicality of it.

Answer 3

You could technically make an ISO out of a Word doc, but why? An ISO is an 'image' of a disc or files. An ISO is used for transfers and such of CD's/DVD's when it is not possible to transfer as the files themselves, and is also more convenient among many other uses.

For example, if I wanted to send you a DVD, instead of transferring say 40-60 individual files, I can create an ISO and send it to you as one file ready to burn to disc.


Cheers

Answer 4

ISO files are generally CD images (the CD-ROM standard is ISO 9660, so people started calling a CD image file ISO).

ISOs are usually used to archive existing software CDs onto DVDs or for transmission via electronic means.

I can't think of a reason why you'd want to turn a single document into an ISO image, but you can do it.

Answer 5

Simply put an .iso file is a CD image in file form. A "snapshot" if you will of any CD media.

You can in theory take any CD/DVD/HDDVD/Blueray disk and copy it to an .iso. Send the .iso file to a friend/other device, and use a burning program like Nero to burn the .iso to a recordable disk.

Keep in mind however this may violate copyright laws (ie. copying commercial software) without prior permission. It's up to you to follow these laws. (yahoo "Software Piracy" for more info)

Another bar even for legitimate copies is DRM/Copy protection; most current day software has some copy protection in it that makes it difficult (impossible on most generic burning programs) to copy to another disk and have it function correctly.

Aswell keep in mind media sizes. If you copy a 2700 megabyte (approx 2.7 gig) DVD-ROM disk to an .iso file (generally the .iso will be slightly more than 2700 megs)
to burn the .iso 'image file' to another disk you will need a media that can fit that amount of data on in (A CD-R (Cdrom burnable) will only beable to at most hold 800 megabytes of data.

In conclusion; a word document could be 'in' an .iso (cd-image file) however it will be useless to you unless you reburn it to another cd-media and/or use a cd-emulator program to load the .iso file into a virtual drive. Daemon Tools is popular for this.

Hope this helps;

Cheers;

Answer 6

ISO files are generally for movies. They are basically single burnable files that hold other information. With movies they hold the video files. I use them to burn dvds. Especially movies. I havent heard of them being used for much else but I imagine they could be used for word files. I wouldnt see why though except that they would burn onto a disc with just one file, but you can just zip them or rar them in that instance.

Answer 7

Something has gone terribly wrong, Word docs doesnt change to ISO

Answer 8

iso is a disk image for burning. If you copy a disc then you can send it anywhere and they would use it to burn an exact image of that disc.

Answer 9

It's an image you can create out of something so you can easily burn it into a cd or dvd while keeping everything intact.