What is ISO? I hear many people say 'Burn ISO into a CD'! I do not understand what it is? Advise please.?

Question

Some say, Download ISO Image and burn in a CD! Is it an image such as jpg?

Why is it called ISO! Why don't just i say burn file.txt, program.exe, or burn system files into a CD.....

Any idea!

Answer 1

An ISO Image Is a special file which contain other files for burning onto A CD. Use something such as Active@ ISO Burner (http://www.ntfs.com/iso-burning.htm) and select the ISO file, pop a blank CD/DVD in the writer, press start and off you go! It will write all the files onto the CD without you worrying that you might have missed one.

Answer 2

First, you need to understand something about what is actually on a CD.  There are individual files, of course, things like your 'file.txt' or 'program.exe'; but there is also other information there (sometimes called meta-data) which specifies the file names, sizes, locations, modification dates, and the like.  An ISO image is not an visual image, like a JPG, but what is called a binary image of the complete CD contents.  It's what you would get if you copied the CD bit-by-bit to a binary file, and contains all the files and their data along with all the meta-data.  It needs to be written back to a CD in the same bit-by-bit way.  If you were to just burn it as an ordinary file, then the meta-data on the resulting CD would just describe that file, not the files from the original source.

Incidentally, it is called an ISO image because there is a standard CD format specified by the International Standards Organization (the ISO).

Answer 3

.iso is a disc image file that is ready to be burned to CD or DVD. "Image" doesn't mean picture, per-se. It can be a DVD movie, it can be software to be installed on a computer, it can be a rip of a music CD. It's a collection of files, organized and ready to be burned to a disc right away, as opposed to being a bunch of random files that have to be prepared to be burned.