ISO disk image reader. The best programs to create an ISO disk image

An ISO image is often used to create a copy of installation programs such as Windowsds.

An ISO file is an optical image of a CD or DVD disc containing the ISO 9660 file system.

The image is a simple file. With the help of specialized programs, it can be used instead of a standard CD.

Such a file has less information than the disk itself from which it was written off. The disc may contain information that may protect it from being copied.

Only programs that have this capability can save such information.

You can view the information of an ISO file using archiving programs that can support this format.

Often such a file is used to "pack" as many files and folders as possible into one archive.

This format allows the storage and distribution of bootable and other large files at a faster rate than via removable or other physical media.

Now the ISO format is used more and more often.

The main difficulty with such files is that Windows Vista and XP initially cannot recognize their format, which is why some inexperienced PC users have difficulty.

When trying to open without pre-installed third-party software, older operating systems do not know what to do with this file.

How to open ISO file?

Read also: 5 easy ways to create an image of Windows 10

Rice. 2. Create a disk image

This format is most often used to transfer information from a CD or DVD over the Internet or media.

The archive saves all the necessary data, which is then transferred and unpacked on another computer.

Recently, this format has been used frequently, therefore, every PC user should know how to open it, because not every computer will be able to immediately select the right program.

This format is used to archive games and operating system data.

This is done so that it can be launched without having a physical disk, but with only its image. In this case, you can do without unpacking.

You can simply run the file by double-clicking it. But if you need to extract information from a virtual disk, you will need a special program.

At the moment, there are several more well-known, free programs that are easy to use and available to any user. So how do you open an ISO file?

1 Alcohol

4 WinRAR

5 7-zip

5 Windows 8-10 (system explorer)

Read also: TOP 15 programs for cleaning your computer from garbage

Daemon Tools is a CD/DVD imaging software.

The drive is created by software, after which it is perceived by the computer as if there is a disk in it. This allows you to use the images as if they were physically existing discs that are in a CD-ROM.

It is possible to create images in various formats for later use in this and other similar programs.

A virtual drive is created to increase the speed of information transfer and reduce media wear.

One of the most popular utilities for creating images and unpacking them.

Rice. 3. Utility download page

On the official website of the developer, you can find a free version, but after the update you will have to buy it. Go to the developer's website and click the "Download" button.

In order to open the files you need, the Lite version will be enough. This version is suitable if you do not need to perform any complex manipulations. It is in second place, on the developer's site.

After downloading the program, install it and run it. To create an image, click on the button shown in Figure 4.

Rice. 4. Creating an image in Daemon Tools

After clicking on this button, you need to select the file you want to convert.

But it will not start in the program, however, it can be found in "My Computer" as a disk in the drive.

You can also open it through "My Computer", but before that you need to run it in the program. To do this, press the corresponding button shown in Fig.5.

Fig.5 Launching the image into work.

After launching the image, it will be visible in "My Computer", where it can already be opened.

Fig.6 Added disk image.

Through Daemon Tools, the work is quite simple.

Given the fact that lately ISO files have become quite popular and widespread, this program must be on your PC.

Its system requirements are small, the amount of memory is minimal. Additionally, it can be noted that this utility is often installed along with the game, as a mandatory application, if this happens from a disk through a drive.

From the reviews:

"Great optical disk virtualization software, and it's free too"

"One of the best disc imaging software"

"Excellent and high quality creates a virtual disk and stores data on them"

Alcohol

Read also: Error "Windows cannot complete formatting": causes of the error and 5 ways to fix it

A paid application for creating disk images.

With its help, you can create up to 31 drives, as well as burn information to a CD.

There is a version of Alcohol 52%, which is distinguished by the lack of the ability to record information on media, and is also absolutely free and intended for non-commercial use.

You can download this program on the official website of the developer.

But it is free only for 30 days. Next, the utility asks to buy a license.

The full version can, of course, be downloaded from pirate sites, but this is not recommended, as you can download virus software, thereby harming your PC.

By going to the developer's site, you will be taken to the main page. On it you need to click "Download trial".

After that, you will automatically go to the download page, where you need to click the "Download" button, after which the download of the installation file will begin.

After the download is complete, install the program and run it. The main window will open, in which we select the "File" submenu, and then click "Open".

Fig.9. The main window of the utility.

Further work with the finished image is no different from working in Daemon Tools - Run "My Computer", find the desired disk and run it.

From the reviews:

“This program is much better than Daemon Tools, by a lot! Images are very easy to make, and it is easy to remove (unlike again from Daemon Tools) ”;

"Cool program for images";

“A must for any computer. Doesn't need comments.

“A cool program is very necessary for gamers!!!”;

"Damn, the program is generally a bomb, and even if you know how to use it, download it without fail !!!".

Read also:We create a bootable USB flash drive with utilities for Windows on our own

The program is designed for Windows OS, the main functions of which are creating, editing and converting CD/DVD images.

Has the ability to emulate and create CD recording.

There are paid and free versions. The difference is that in the free one it is impossible to work with images whose size is more than 300 MB. Multilingual interface. Can use native ISZ format.

UltraISO is not only popular but also easy to use. Its simplicity is the reason for its popularity. You can download the program for free on any site where it is available. One of the best is SoftPortal. How to download the program:

1 We go to the above site and look for UltraISO in the search bar. Click on the "Download" button.

Fig.12. Downloading the utility.

The site will automatically redirect you to another page where you will need to select the download source - the developer's site or an alternative to it.

Fig.14. Open file for installation.

When the installation is complete, open the program. After launching the application, we proceed to open the disk image using the "Open" button, as shown in Fig. 15.

Fig.15. Opening a file to create an image.

In the window that opens, select the desired ISO file to create the image. The content will open as shown in Figure 16.

Fig.16. Image content.

Everything that is in the image is displayed in this window. Here you can already choose what you need and work with the file.

The program is easy to use, so even the most inexperienced beginner can handle it.

From the reviews:

“The program is just super, I advise everyone”;

“The program can be useful in a variety of cases, from creating an image from a physical disk to converting formats. There is a function to write images to disk. Working with the program is quite easy, it is Russified, which contributes to the rapid development of all functions. The internal file browser allows you to conveniently browse folders and select files for new projects. Recommended for use!”;

Developed in 1999, it is still popular among users and open source, which, under license, is freely distributed.

The main platform is the Windows operating system. GUI and command line versions are available.

Surprising is the fact that an ISO file can be opened by a regular 7-zip archiver.

You can download the full free version on the developer's website. On the download page, you will need to select the version of the system.

If your PC is running Windows 7, then 64-bit will most likely work. After selecting the version, click the "Download" button, after which the download of the installation file will begin.

Fig.10. Utility download page.

Installation has no features and occurs in the same way as with any other program.

After the installation is complete, run the program. If you click on the “Plus” (add) button in the window that opens, another window will open in which you already need to select the ISO file for unpacking.

The contents of the file will be opened as in a regular folder. To extract what you need, just drag the selected file from the utility to the desktop with the mouse.

Fig.11. Adding a file for unpacking.

From the reviews:

“The program is pleasant to work with, everything is smooth and hassle-free. Archives can be unpacked both in the current folder and in a folder with the name as the name of the archive itself (which is much more convenient). You can zip the folder (“Add to archive”) and send it by e-mail. You can just open the archive and see its contents";

“Very simple, very useful and functional, highly recommended”;

“The program is excellent, I have been using it for more than a year. Works well, well done developers. And most importantly, it's free!!! Get it, you won't regret it."

Hello dear readers, today we will talk with you about virtual optical disc images. Many inexperienced computer users often have a question: how to open the iso format. Let me remind you that an ISO image is a kind of virtual image of an optical disc that has a file system in accordance with the ISO 9660 standard.

Such ISO images are created for subsequent burning to a physical disk (CD, DVD, etc.), but there are often situations when you need to view or copy some files that are already in the ISO image. The following programs are widely used to read such virtual images of physical disks: PowerISO, Daemon tools, Alcohol, UltraISO, Nero, WinISO, and many others.

As you can see, ISO images can be opened by many software products. True, they still need to be installed on a computer and figured out how they work, but today we are interested in a quick, express method for viewing such an image without using additional programs.

Winrar

To start working with this utility, you need to do the following steps "Start" - "All Programs" - "Winrar" - "Winrar".

7- Zip

When working with this program, use the right mouse button to click on the ISO image and select "7-Zip" - "Open archive" in the context menu.

To make the above operations faster, right-click on the image and select "Open with ...". After that, a menu will open in which you need to select an archiver: Winrar or 7-Zip.

If you have a situation of frequent use of files located in an ISO image, then you can do the following: in order not to open it every time using the presented utilities, you can copy the necessary files from the image to a separate folder.

Open ISO with programs

So we figured out how to open an ISO file using archivers. Of course, this method is very easy and requires almost no skills. In practice, it becomes necessary to store the downloaded data in the form of ISO images and, if necessary, “connect” them or burn them. This is similar to how you insert a disc into a drive. Only for our purpose, a real drive is completely unnecessary.

There are programs that create a so-called virtual disk. Once the drive is "inserted", you can see it in My Computer just as if it were a real one and access any data on it. To do this, just understand one of the programs, which will be discussed below, and you can connect your ISO images with the click of a button.

Daemon Tools

One of the easiest programs to mount images is Daemon Tools. Its main advantage is not only simplicity, but also the availability of a free version, which will be enough to find out not only how to open the iso format, but also taking this opportunity, I will show you how to connect a virtual disk.

Therefore, we will go straight to the manufacturer's website and download the program from there:.

Click on the "Download" button. We launch our DAEMON Tools Lite and in the window that opens, click "Next", then "Accept", and now select "Free license", then click "Next", and then again "Next" and "Install". The program is installed, click "Close", after unchecking all the checkboxes.

Now by right-clicking on the ISO file, selecting "Open With" and then "DAEMON Tools Lite", the image data disc will be available in "My Computer" as if it were inserted into your computer's drive.

If you no longer need the data on the disk, you can right-click on the disk icon in the "My Computer" section and select "Eject" from the drop-down menu.

UltraISO

Now let's figure out how to open an ISO file using a simple UltraISO program. Download the UltraISO program from . Select your country from the list and click on any of the two green arrows next to it.

We launch the downloaded file, thoughtfully click "Next", agree to the terms of the developers, click "Next" four times and "Install" once, uncheck the boxes and close the window, as in the previous case.

Now right-click on the desired ISO file and select "Open with" and then "UltraISO". A new window will open where you can view files or copy them using "drag and drop" by simply clicking on the desired file and dragging it to the area where you want to store it. By the way, we will use an unregistered program, so before opening, click on the "Trial period ..." button.

CDBurnerXP

The last thing to pay attention to is how to open the ISO file using the CDBurnerXP program. A small note: this method is for those who want to immediately burn data from ISO to disk, if this is required of course. To do this, you need a real drive and a blank disc. The disk size depends on how big the ISO file is. Usually this is a DVD. In any case, the size of the ISO file must be smaller than the size of the disc.

Download the latest version from the official website:

Install the program by selecting "Next" 4 times and "Install" 1 time, refuse to install a third-party program and click "Next". Now a shortcut to the program will appear on the desktop, launch it and in the window that opens, select the inconspicuous "Open" button below.

In the window that opens, find the desired ISO file and select it by clicking "Open". Now click "Burn disc" and, if everything is in order, the program will start recording.

After the burning is completed, all data from the ISO file will be on the disk and will be available at any time. This method is convenient for saving data that, whatever happens, will be intact and will not need to be moved or opened. Now you probably know how to open an ISO file better than me;).

How to run ISO file? You can create this file, mount it on a virtual disk of a personal computer or extract all information from it using various methods.

ISO is a special file containing an absolute copy or image of the information found on an optical disc. This type of format is often used for backup duplication of optical discs or for delegating large sets of files written to CD or DVD.

How to run an ISO image file?

There is only one way to launch an ISO image file - use 2 types of utilities to unpack images - archivers and emulators.

Archivers is a type of software that interacts with archive components. Their main task is to compress information or combine a huge number of different files into one so that it is easier to transfer them, while reducing the amount of information without losing data. These are "7Zip", "WinRar" and others.

Emulators (drives) are needed not to interact with the files inside the images, but to generate virtual disks and attach ISO files to them instead of standard storage media. With their help, you cannot edit the information inside them.

Daiemon Tooles- professional, in terms of personal functions, software for generating disk images and emulating virtual drives using various protection methods. Allows you to generate various popular images from all types of discs with the ability to protect the code and compression.

This program generates up to four different virtual drives in total, which function like physical counterparts, only much faster. A great thing for devices that do not have an optical drive.

Alcohol

- a serious utility for recording all kinds of disc formats and generating virtual drives on a PC, as well as emulating information from an optical disc. This development is capable of writing a disk image with information, sound and video information to a hard drive, and then opening access to it to other applications, as if the desired optical disk was actually inserted into the drive. This is very important for games and programs that can only be run from a disc.

This is a high-quality utility for generating, correcting and transforming various types of disk images. Interacts with more than 35 different extensions. Also, the software can emulate an optical drive, which allows you to run images even on devices without drives. And if it is available, the information can be saved to empty disks.

With regards to the possibilities, in addition to performing images of optical discs, UltraISO can also generate images of external media and even HDD. Comfortable, because inside the resulting archive, if necessary, there is a function to add, change and delete various components without having to open them. Still images can be used as additional virtual disks.

7zip

An excellent archiver for Windows, the advantages include speed, support for all available formats and an excellent compression ratio. The application is embedded in the system explorer. There is a version for the console line and the FAR Manager extension, which allows you to work with archives without third-party archivers.

Without this well-known, comfortable and easy-to-use archiver, it is impossible to imagine everyday work with various archives. Interacts with many archive extensions, including: BZ2, ZIP, 7Z, ACE and others.

Among the colossal list of program features, it is worth noting the ability to restore corrupted and damaged archives, generate multi-volume and self-extracting archives, work with encrypted and encoded archives, as well as the ability to compress an almost unlimited number of files.

Windows Explorer (Windows 8.1 and 10 only)

Starting with Windows 8, Microsoft introduced the ability to open ISO files directly through File Explorer. Windows 10 also has this feature. You can easily run and burn ISO files without installing additional programs, which is very convenient and simplifies the task.

It is enough to find and select the desired file with this extension in the system explorer and open it. If there are third-party emulators and archivers, then you can open through them - the explorer will not interfere.

There must be at least 2 emulators or archivers on the user's computer, since some of them may not be able to cope with various types of files and amounts of underlying data and consumption.

Daemon Tools Lite is a CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive emulator, a freeware program for reading and creating virtual images of laser optical discs. With the help of Daemon Tools Lite you can create up to 4 virtual CD/DVD/Blu-ray drives in the system and you can use them like ordinary optical drives, with the only difference that you need to insert electronic casts, images of optical media into them. Daemon Tools Lite is a great solution for a computer that does not have a laser drive. Install Daemon Tools Lite and you will be able to create *.iso, *.mdx and *.mds disk images, as well as mount images of *.iso, *.nrg, *.cue, *.vhd, *.ccd formats into a virtual drive, *.bwt, *.b5t, *.b6t, *.cdi, *.isz, *.dmg.

Reading images

Using a virtual disk image allows you to more reliably store information, because the disk image file cannot be scratched, and the reading speed from a virtual drive is many times higher than the reading speed of a conventional drive, moreover, when accessing a virtual drive, there is no noise at all that occurs when a laser disk rotates. It is also convenient to store information in the form of image files on disk, because it does not take up space on the shelves. Mounting disks is possible directly from the Explorer window, the program is built into its context menu during installation. Daemon Tools Lite implements copy protection bypass algorithms for Laserlock, CDCOPS, Protect CD, SafeDisc, Securom, StarForce and others, thanks to which you can emulate both regular and protected disks.

Screenshots of Daemon Tools Lite

Each user may at some point encounter the problem of files with the iso extension. It is not always possible to understand the first time how to open a disk image, how to use it. For this, special programs have been created that allow you to unpack or view such files.

What is an ISO (ISO) file

By default, Windows does not specify how to open the iso extension, and the user needs to select the utility on their own. In this format, disc images are saved, which can then be burned or used on a computer. To put it differently, this is an archive that completely collects all data from the media and is its complete copy. You can create it from any CD or DVD media. As a rule, this is how game discs or operating systems are saved.

Often the iso format is used to create a copy of Windows, which can later be burned to a disk, USB flash drive and used for installation on another computer. Many people have a question about how to open an iso image. For example, this can be done using the tools built into the operating system or using conventional archivers.

How to open a disk image

A person may need to open an image in order to pull out one particular file, or to use the entire contents. For these purposes, there are two ways:

• use the archiving programs WInRar or 7Zip;
• through special utilities with virtual drives.

Opening files by archivers

The easiest way to open a disk image is to use archivers. They are very easy to download and install and are free to use. It is better to download from official sites, so as not to introduce viruses along with the installer. The most popular and reliable options for opening archives are WinRar and 7Zip. All modern versions support the Russian language, so it will be easy to navigate the interface.

Both of these utilities provide the same functionality, which is the ability to open iso, extract the necessary files from it. During the installation of the archiver, you must check the box "Integration with the operating system shell". After that, you can simply right-click on the file. In the menu, select the appropriate item, where the name of the utility for archives is indicated. An additional list will offer you a choice of doing several different actions:

• open;
• extract (you can select any folder);
• extract to the current folder.

It should be borne in mind that this method provides the opportunity to work with the image in read-only format; you will not be able to write files to a disk or flash drive through the archiver. This provides the ability to work with content only on the computer itself. For example, if you need to reinstall the operating system, you will not be able to burn a USB flash drive with OS files.

Using special programs

Wider functionality for working with iso is offered by a program for reading disk images. As a rule, for their full use, you need to buy a license, but for working at home, the trial version will be enough. At the moment, two utilities are considered the most popular:

• DemonTools;
• Ultra ISO.

Daemon Tools Disk Image Mounter

One of the options for opening iso is Deamon Tool. To use on a free basis, you can download the Lite version, it is freely available on the official website of the developers. The essence of the utility is that it creates several virtual drives on your PC into which you can mount iso. Install the program: an icon should appear in the tray, which will help you quickly disconnect, connect disk images.

Automatically after installation, one virtual drive will appear, which can be used immediately. For this:

1. Click on the utility icon with the left button.
2. Hover over the name of the drive. We click on it.
3. An explorer window will appear, through which you should specify the path to the iso folder. Select it.
4. Go through Explorer to the drive created by the program and perform the necessary actions with the contents.

If necessary, you can right-click on the program icon and open the settings and control panel. A more “friendly” and visual version of the utility interface can be seen if you run it in full screen mode from the desktop (or from the folder where you installed it). Additional tooltips will pop up in the menu when you hover over the controls.

Open ISO file with UltraISO

Another option for opening iso is the UltraISO disk image program. The full version must be purchased, but for home use, you should always choose to start a trial after installation. To install, you need to go to the official page of the utility and download it, where you can also select the required interface language before downloading. Further, the algorithm is as follows:

1. Start the installation of UltraISO, agree with all the points. No additional checkboxes need to be set or unchecked.
2. After installation, you can click on any iso file and select a utility from the proposed list. After that, such an extension will open automatically through it.
3. By double-clicking, a window will appear in front of you, where all the contents of the image will be shown.

The main advantage of UltraISO is that you can immediately unpack all the data or start the process of burning to disk. To do this, select the icon with a burning disc (“Burn CD image”) in the top menu. If you want to install the game, then first mount the iso to a virtual drive or unpack it to any folder on your computer. For this:

1. in the top menu, click on the "Actions" tab;
2. select the "Extract ..." item;
3. indicate the place where to carry out unpacking.

Video: how to open an iso file