Image Making Which is best?

[cyborgxxi 0]

I use this Korean virtual drive software that allows me to save CD's onto my computer (believe me, lots of my CDs are badly scratched up - I could barely install my Starcraft Brood War game!!) so I have to use it.But I have a question - which format is the best? For example, there is the WMD (media something) and CloneCD... and one other.. and the ISOI have been seeing the ISO term used frequently on the Net so I backed up both CDs as ISO. But I seriously want to know what the differences are and which is the best. Thanks!

[hatim 0]

ISO, i think its the most used format. i have rarely found CDs of other formats

[wwheeler 0]

Definition of ISO from Wikipedia:

An ISO image in computing is a disc image of an ISO 9660 file system.

ISO is not a format persay, but it is a simple file format that takes an image of the disk, meaning a copy of all of the data on the disk, and creates a file of all of the data.

 

If you download CD's off the internet, then you are downloading an ISO file.

 

As a small trivia note, ISO comes from the internation Orginization for Standardization, And the Term comes from latin vulgate Isos, or Equality.

 

-William

[max bitt 0]

I usually use ISO, but some people use other. For example nero img. If you know Alchohol they use .mdf format. But you can mount it with daemon tools so that's why it's suxs. Also, you can make BIN format which is poppular too. I mean it's almost like ISO.

[cyborgxxi 0]

Hm... alright I'm going to start making images of CD's in ISO format. Althought ISO doesn't have an icon image for it, it's still fine. My friend told me it's like a zip file for a CD - it uses less space than a WDF.

[szupie 0]

Yes, it's kinda like a zip file, but I don't think it compresses much. A floppy disk doesn't zip up the files inside, that's why you don't need a "floppy burner" program to put files in a floppy. But, you need to zip up files before you put it inside a CD, using programs like Nero, Windows Explorer, Magic ISO, etc.

[abhiram 0]

I don't think it really matters what format you are going to save your images in since all the image formats occupy more or less the same space.

 

ISO is the most widely accepted, but you've also got NRG (Nero) and VCD (Virtual CD) and BIN and CUE formats. You have utilities freely available on the net to change them from one format to another. But if you plan to use them in Linux also, then ISO is the format to store them in.

 

But, since you are saying you need to make images of your game CDs and be able to play them right off from the hard disk, I would suggest you download and use Daemon tools. I haven't used it... but from what it says on their webpage, they support a whole lot of image formats.