An ISO image is an archive file (disk image) of an optical disc using a conventional ISO (International Organization for Standardization) format. ISO image files typically have a file extension of .ISO.

Many times is convenient to mount an ISO file directly instead of burning it to a CD first. Not only does this save on wasted CDs/DVDs, but allows much faster access to the ISO since it is on the hard disk itself.

Create the directory or mount point for the ISO.

$ sudo mkdir -p /mnt/disk

Use the mount command to mount the ISO

$ sudo mount -o loop disk_image.iso /mnt/disk

A loop device is a pseudo-device that makes a file accessible as a block device. You can now access the files within the ISO as you would a normal disk at the mount point ‘/mnt/disk’.

No related posts.

The standard way to create a Windows boot disk is to have access to a Windows system. If you have access to a Linux system instead, and know a couple tricks, you can create boot disk as well.

The first thing to do is find a website that has the boot disks available for download. There are plenty of these out there so take your pick. The only thing you must specifically do is make sure that you download the disk image and not a self extracting executable file which must be run under Windows.

If the image is zipped unzip it.

$ unzip cdboot1.zip

Archive:  cdboot1.zip
  inflating: CDBOOT1.IMG

Check that the disk image is the correct size.

$ ls -lh CDBOOT1.IMG

-r--r--r-- 1 ryan ryan 1.5M 1999-12-07 12:00 CDBOOT1.IMG

Finally, you will use the dd command to copy the disk image to a blank floppy disk.

$ dd if=CDBOOT1.IMG of=/dev/fd0

Related posts

1. Installing Ubuntu 9.10 on the Dell Zino HD The Dell Inspiron Zino HD is the perfect machine if...