Beginners question

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Guest

Can someone explain in simple terms please what use I would have for an ISO
image?

If I'm burning files and folders to a CD surely that's all I need to do. At
what point would I need to create an ISO image?

thanks
 
paul said:
Can someone explain in simple terms please what use I would have for an
ISO image?

If I'm burning files and folders to a CD surely that's all I need to do.
At what point would I need to create an ISO image?

thanks
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iso9660

"Disc images

ISO 9660 file system images (ISO images) are a common way to
electronically transfer the contents of CD-ROMs. They often
have the filename extension .iso (.iso9660 is less common, but
also in use) and are commonly referred to as "ISOs". It should
be noted an .iso file may be:

1. A single ISO 9660 file system image
2. A multi-track disc image with a table of contents"

If you wanted to let somebody copy a CDROM you had, you could set up
an FTP server on your computer, put a 700MB .iso file on the server.
They could download the file to their computer, and use the .iso file
with their CD or DVD burning software. An ISO is a convenient "envelope"
to carry the contents of the CD. Some Linux distros, are distributed
as an ISO image, and many burner packages will understand what to do
with an ISO.

Paul
 
paul said:
Thanks, i've already looked at wiki but this doesnt really answer my
question.
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_image

"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."

So the advantage of an ISO, is it can encapsulate a bootable disk image.
If you are just burning files and folders to a CD, that won't boot.
But if you are putting an OS on the CD, then you need to put the info
on the CD in such a way that a computer can boot from it.

Paul
 
Can someone explain in simple terms please what use I would have for an
ISO image?

If I'm burning files and folders to a CD surely that's all I need to do.
At what point would I need to create an ISO image?
Click to expand...

ISO is useful if you need to share a specific CD setup over ftp. For
instance, some Windows demo versions are (were) available as ISO. You drop
the ISO on your CD burner tool and it makes a bootable Win install CD, with
all the tricks. Copying a list of files probably won't get you the same kind
of CD.

I'm probably leaving out a lot of details, but for guys like you and me this
is close enough, I think. ;-)

-John O
 
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