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How To Burn And Work With An ISO File Using PowerISO
There comes a time when you need to know certain basics about maintaining a PC. One of them is burning a image file, commonly known .IMG or .ISO files. Why?
With the Internet constantly growing, so too is the online software market. Typically, you pay extra for a shipped DVD with your purchased software. However, this is usually an unreasonable €15-€20. So you skip that and download it. Someday, either you will buy a new PC or re-format it and will need to reinstall. One way to keep your software safe that you downloaded is to burn it to a disc.
There are different types of discs that you burn. I am concerned with just two for now, Bootable and Non-Bootable. We will cover both burning the disc and mounting the disc.
Bootable
This is like your windows installation disc. Notice when you put it in the drive and start the computer, the computer recognizes it and starts the disc instead of your Operating System. (This is as long as your BIOS is set to check the DVD drive on boot. If not you can press choose F12 or F10 to choose where to boot from).Non-Bootable
This is a disc that has no purpose or need to boot with the start up of a machine. It will usually contain just regular files.Software Installations
Burning the Image File
For the rest of this article, we are interested in bootable image files. We will use the example of the free OS Ubuntu 9.10, since its just out and this week we will be doing a full post on installing Ubuntu for the novice.
When you download the free Ubuntu Operating System from their website, it comes as a .ISO file like this:
A snapshot of the file sitting in my download folder.
OK. So, if you’ve already downloaded your Ubuntu Package you have an .ISO to play with already. Go find your download, double-click it to open it and PowerISO will pop open. Click Continue Evaluating and you will see the files from this image in front of you…
PowerISO with the Ubuntu Install files as if you were looking a DVD drive
Using the Image File Without Burning It
Yes, you don’t have to waste a disc every time you want to use a .ISO or .IMG file. You can simply load it as if it were a real disc. Remember when you installed PowerISO earlier? And it asked you to reboot? Well, it reboots because it installed a virtual CD/DVD drive in your My Computer folder. Go have a look.
See.. I have really only got one physical drive.. yet here I have three!
Open the drive like you would any folder and you have access to the files.
That’s all there is to it. Have fun.
This article was written in preparation for the upcoming article How to the new Ubuntu 9.10 for a novice. Before this article is published, there will be an intermediate article entitled How to install and use Virtual Box.
Did you enjoy the tutorial? Please let me know.
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About the author
Owner of an IT company called Data Defence IT Solutions. Living in the West of Ireland and married with a kid... I clearly love technology and gadgets. At the minute I have a Tranquil Windows Home Server to manage my websites, files and entertainment. I use an Android handset, the Hero as my personal phone and a Nokia n86 as my business phone.
| Print article | This entry was posted by Konrad Walsh-(admin) on November 9, 2009 at 18:34, and is filed under Software, tutorials. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
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about 8 months ago
Hey great post, i use ultra ISO but they re pretty much the same thing.
Excellent post, cause a lot of people don’t understand the importance of ISO files, they are a lot faster and secure than dealing with CD’s and they are easy to transfer from person to person through removable media or even the internet.
We have E-books, so that you can read on the go and dont have to bring 300 books in your bag,
ISO are like E-CD’s/DVD’s you can put all your games, Info, programs onto a removable storage and back it up.
This post is good cause i think people will now see that dealing with ISO ‘s is not such a big task and works to your advantage.
Thanks again for the posts
about 8 months ago
You explained that well.. and yes ultraiso is definitely just as good…