How Do I Create, Burn, or Mount an .ISO File?
A few years ago, I finally made the decision to stop buying an optical drive when building a new PC because I can’t remember the last time I really needed to insert a disc into my computer. Yes, I’ll probably still get a 4K player someday – when the next PlayStation 5 or Xbox Whatever comes out – but we’re now living in a world of streaming and downloading. It’s easy to make a bootable USB drive that’s even faster than installing anything (like Windows 10) from a disk.
However, the whole world has not yet moved away from discs. And here to tell us more about the related issue for Tech 911 this week, Lifehacker reader Jim :
I recently stumbled upon the Lego Chess video game on the abandoned software site and downloaded a package for the game. It comes with four files like ccd, cue, img, sub. Img seems to be meat since it is 579 MB. The download itself is called ISO, so I believe that next I need to create a real ISO of files. Any suggestions for a current Windows 10 malware free utility that I could use?
So, you didn’t really mention what you are going to do with the ISO you want to create – are you going to burn it to a physical disk, which you certainly can, or are you just going to store it and mount it on a virtual disk if needed. You have a variety of options anyway, so let’s start from the beginning.
I usually expect the disk image to be in the form of .BIN and .CUE files. In your case, since you have .CCD, .CUE, .IMG and .SUB files, this tells me that the entire package was built using a Windows application called CloneCD . If you plan on burning the .IMG file to a physical disk, I recommend using CloneCD to ensure a flawless copy. All you need is a trial / free version of the app.
Similarly, you can install Virtual CloneDrive (Windows) if you want to mount the downloaded files as a drive instead. For your operating system, it will appear as if you had installed a physical disk in the operating system. This saves you the hassle of fiddling with the actual burning process (which could include buying new hardware and / or discs), and installing the game should be much faster.
I would research the latter, because then you can use a tool like ImgBurn (Windows) to copy and convert your virtual drive to a more versatile ISO file that can then be used on a Windows or Mac system. (This probably won’t work for your game as it is most likely for Windows only, but this is just a general observation.)
I’ve listed Windows apps so far, but for anyone reading this on Mac, you should be able to use the Homebrew ccd2iso formula to convert what you have to an ISO file. You can then burn it to disc using an application like Burn, or mount it directly using Disk Utility.
You can also mount ISO images directly in Windows 10 – another reason to convert your image, if only to have fewer files to work with and a little extra convenience.