UltraISO

Description

ISO image files — single-file containers that hold the complete contents of a disc — are the standard format for the distribution of operating systems, software and bootable media. UltraISO opens, edits, creates and burns those files and deals with the whole workflow around the topic of disc images on Windows. It extracts files from an ISO without mounting it, adds or removes content from an existing image, converts between image formats, and writes an image to a USB drive or optical disc in a bootable format that works correctly when the target device uses it to boot a computer.

EZB Systems created UltraISO and have been doing so since 2002, growing the software into one of the most popular disc image software in the Windows ecosystem. The trial version opens and extracts from ISO files with no restriction but puts a limit on the file size of images it can create or save, which the paid license removes.

KEY FEATURES

ISO Editing

UltraISO is able to open ISO, BIN/CUE, NRG, MDF, IMG, and other disc image formats and display its contents in a file browser with directory tree and file listing inside the disc image. Files add to the image via drag-and-drop from Windows Explorer into the UltraISO window and existing files remove via select-and-drag-and-drop from the image file listing. The edited image saves back to the original format or converts to ISO when saving the image. This editing capability is especially useful for editing bootable disc images — adding drivers to a Windows installation disc image, updating a Linux live disc with some extra packages, or editing configuration files inside a bootable image.

Bootable USB Drive Creation

UltraISO writes bootable images to USB drives via its Bootable menu and takes care of the process of making the USB drive boot from the image. The Syslinux-based boot method is used for the Linux distributions, and the Windows-specific boot method writes the Windows installation ISOs in a format that is recognized by the UEFI and legacy systems at startup. This makes UltraISO a tool for creating installation media for operating systems distributed as ISO files.

Disc Burning

UltraISO burns ISOs and other image formats to CD, DVD and Blu-ray with a burning interface that determines the writing speed and finalizes the disc to work with standard drives. Disc-to-image creation is used to read an optical disc and write it to an ISO file, essentially it is a backup of the physical media.

Virtual Drive Mounting

UltraISO is used to create up to 8 virtual optical drives on the Windows system. Mounting an ISO to a virtual drive causes it to look like a physical disc in Windows Explorer and to applications that look for optical media, which means that software that requires a disc can be run from the image file without a physical disc present. Virtual drives are listed along with the physical disc drives and mount images from the UltraISO’s file browser.

Format Conversion

The format conversion tool, converting between ISO and other common disc image formats: BIN/CUE, NRG (Nero), MDF/MDS (Alcohol), IMG and others. This way it is possible to work with images that are created by other tools on the disc in the workflow of UltraISO, or convert an image to ISO for compatibility with tools that use that format only.

Compression and Splitting

UltraISO compresses disc images so that they are smaller for storage and transfer and uses internal compression that reduces the size of the image but does not affect the image’s functionality. Large images are divided into more than one file of user-defined size limit for storage on media with smaller capacity limits.

File System Support

UltraISO supports reading and creating images with ISO 9660, Joliet, UDF and Rock Ridge file systems, including the file formats used for Windows installation media, Linux distributions, macOS installation images and mixed-platform data discs.