PowerISO is an application used to create, open, mount / emulate, compress, encrypt, and otherwise manipulate CD / DVD image files. It is most commonly known for its proprietary DAA disc image format. Other supported formats include ISO, BIN, NRG, and CDI. PowerISO is able to modify all supported CD images formats, most notably ISO. The trial version cannot create or edit images greater than 300 megabytes, but can burn files of any size to disc. The maximum file size PowerISO can process is 256GB.[2]
The free version of this program contains Browser Hijacker software. Therefore it should be considered a form of malware.
PowerISO is currently produced by PowerISO Computing, Inc.
Features
- Supports both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows
- Can open and extract ISO files
- Can create an ISO file from hard disk files or CD/DVD-ROM
- Can edit an existing ISO file
- Can convert image files between ISO/BIN and other formats. PowerISO can convert almost all image file formats to standard ISO format file
- Can make bootable ISO file, get boot information from bootable ISO file
- Can make floppy disk image file
- Can optimize files to save disk space while saving ISO file
- Can mount ISO files with its internal virtual drive
- Supports shell-integration
- PowerISO can save DAA images, which add the following features that are absent in ISO (but can be obtained by manually compressing ISO files):
- Can compress DAA images, thus saving space and allowing smaller downloads
- Can password protect DAA images
- Can split DAA images into multiple smaller files
Direct Access Archive
Direct Access Archive, or DAA, is a proprietary file format developed by PowerISO Computing for disk image files. The format supports features such as compression, password protection, and splitting to multiple volumes. Popular disk image mounting programs such as Alcohol 120% and Daemon Tools currently do not support the mounting of DAA images.
Currently there is no published information about the format. Among mainstream applications, it can be opened or converted with PowerISO and MagicISO. Various free open source packages are also available to convert DAA to ISO images.
Conversion tools
PowerISO provides free command-line tools for Linux and Mac OS X which allow the user to extract DAA files or convert them into ISO format, however these tools haven't been updated to support the newest version of the DAA format. The PowerISO Windows trial version only supports converting images from DAA files up to 300MB,[3] less than half of the capacity of a standard CD.
AcetoneISO is a free CD/DVD management application for Linux that can convert DAA to ISO with the help of the external PowerISO command-line tool for Linux.
daa2iso[4] is an open source command line application has been developed to convert DAA files to ISO files. The program comes with a Windows binary and source code which compiles under Unix-like operating systems. daa2iso allows users to select the .daa file, and the location for the .iso output via standard windows open and save dialogs.
For Mac OS X, DAA Converter[5] is a GUI application which wraps the daa2iso command-line tool (GNU license).
System requirements
- Windows98/Me, Windows2000/XP/2003/Vista operating system or above (although the internal virtual drive needs Windows2000/XP/2003/Vista or above)
- Intel Pentium 166 MHz or above
- 64MB memory
- At least 10MB hard disk space
See also
References
External links
