If you have a damaged CD or DVD which you need to recover data on and trying to copy data from Windows Explorer is not yielding successful results, a tool you might want to try is IsoPuzzle.

Short Description:
The goal of this program is to recover as much as possible data of damaged, bad burned or scratched CDs or DVDs.
This version supports only data CDs and DVDs with sectorsize of 2048 byte – Audio CD, VCD and SVCD are not supported.

IsoPuzzle reads the disc in the drive and creates an ISO file with any data it can recover. This resulting ISO file can either be loaded into a virtual drive or burned to a disc to copy any recovered data.

The product’s website does look dated to say the least, but the tool may be worth a try in a disaster recovery situation. Do take note of the author’s disclaimer that this program makes no guarantee that it can recover any data from a damaged disk.

Has anyone ever used this program and if so, did it do the trick for you?

I’ve messed around with more than a few ISO extraction utilities, such as PowerISO, MagicISO and so on. Utilities like that do what they do very well, but you have to pay for it. And being the only real thing I need with an ISO utility is either to mount drive letters (ex: ISODisk, Daemon Tools, Virtual Clone Drive, etc.) or extract specific files from, I can’t see spending cash on something just for those simple functions.

Before getting into IZArc, if you want to work in an environment that does anything and everything to do with ISO files, UNIX and Linux rules the school in that respect. One of the most powerful programs is built right into the OS, dd. One of dd’s many features is its ability to create ISO files right from the command line. On the GUI side there’s File Roller in the GNOME environment for extracting ISOs.

On the Windows side, IZArc is actually a complete data compression tool. It will do ZIPs, RARs and a ton of other compression formats (including many you probably never heard of), and of course ISOs.

And best of all, it’s free.

Opening up an ISO is as simple as launching IZArc, clicking the Open icon, choosing the ISO, loading it up, picking what you want to extract, choosing where to extract, extracting the files and that’s it.

Here’s an example of the most recent Damn Small Linux distribution ISO opened up in IZArc:

Works great without complaint.

IZArc will run in Win2000, Server 2003, Win XP, Vista or 7.

Did you try IZArc? Did it work for you?

Let us know by writing a comment whether this software worked for you. Did you like it? Hate it? Better or worse than other ISO utilities you tried (especially the pay-software offerings)?

Rarely do I come across a utility that is absolutely ridiculously easy to use, is efficient and just plain works. ISODisk is one of them.

ISODisk is so easy you’d think there would be more to it. This app simply mounts ISO images as drive letters, and creates ISOs from CDs or DVDs. There are no options in the software; it doesn’t need them.

For any drive letter not in use, you click the folder icon next to the letter, pick your ISO (I’m using PC-BSD distribution for my example above), close the app and that’s it. Want to have a whole bunch of drive letters as different ISOs all at once? Go right ahead. Want to unmount a drive letter or two? Just run the app again and click the red X (also shown above) next to the currently assigned letter.

For creating an ISO, click the tab "Create ISO from CD-ROM", choose the physical drive letter you want, click the small disk icon and an ISO is created.

When you download this, don’t be surprised at the super-speed you get it. The installation file is nothing more than a tiny 527k single EXE.

The only, and I mean only, drawback to this software is that it doesn’t work in 64-bit Windows Vista or 7. But it does work for all Windows 32-bit editions, including 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista/7. Being that most people are still in 32-bit world, this isn’t a problem.

It doesn’t get any easier or faster than this when working with ISOs. I give this app two huge thumbs up.

Yesterday I posted about archiving CD/DVDs to your hard drive for easy access and distribution. So now, what if you want to install from one of these? With the use of a tool I have referenced in the past, Virtual Clone Drive, here are simple instructions for installing from an ISO.

Note: These instructions are intended to read by end users I distribute the zip file containing the ISO file (and serial number if needed). I thought this would be the easiest way to write the how to.

1. Download and install Virtual Clone Drive.
2. Extract the ISO file from the zip file to your desktop. Note: If a serial number is needed, a text file will be included in this zip file.
3. Open My Computer and select the Virtual Clone Drive (it will look like a sheep). Right-click it and go to Virtual Clone Drive > Mount.
4. Browse to and select the ISO you extracted from step 2.
5. You can now access the CD from the Virtual Clone Drive like you would from a normal CD drive.
6. Install the program.
7. Once finished, select the Virtual Clone Drive in My Computer. Right-click it and go to Virtual Clone Drive > Unmount to ‘eject’ the CD.
8. You can now delete the ISO file.

This method is a quick and easy way to install programs without having the CD handy.

As you have probably read many times on this site optical media (i.e. CD and DVDs), while reliable and cheap, doesn’t last forever. Because of this, it is a good idea to create copies of your optical media, particularly install CDs to your hard drive. The best choice for archiving these is to use ISO files.

In addition to having a backup you can burn to CD at any time, you can also install directly from the ISO file instead of having to dig for the original media.

One thing I do at work is create an ISO file of all our CD/DVDs and if there is a serial number you need to enter, I create a file named ’serial.txt’ and put in the appropriate information. I then create a zip file (using 7-Zip with maximum compression) of the two and store them. This allows me to distribute the program easily to offsite users without having to burn and mail CDs.

Concerning a digital camera, ISO denotes how sensitive the image sensor is to the amount of light present.

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