UltraISO is one of the oldest and best emulators with full functionality. It is a famous program for working with disk images that are used for creating, editing, converting, and compressing images. The application is available for Windows.

What is this program?

UltraISO for Windows is a powerful program for creating, editing, and converting various CD/DVD image formats. It supports many formats, such as iso, bin, cue, nrg, mdf, mds, img, ccd, sub, ima, and other less common formats (over 30 in total). Moreover, the program can emulate optical drives, allowing you to run the images on devices without disk drives.

Functions and features

UltraISO for Windows allows you to burn new information to CDs/DVDs and edit ISO files. You can also create the boot and multiboot disks and separate images for later burning, convert them from one format to another, and compress ISO to ISZ.

The main screen is divided into 4 windows. The upper two windows show the content of the selected disk, and the lower ones are used for finding and adding files in the directory tree. Copying and transferring are performed by dragging a file from one screen area to another (the drag-and-drop feature). When working with ready images, the utility reserves extra space on a hard drive in the Temp folder.

As for functionality, in addition to creating images of optical disks, you can also create images of USB flash drives and even hard drives. You can add, delete, and edit folders and files without opening (unpacking) them inside the generated archive. Disk images can be used as separate virtual disks.

Other features of UltraISO include:

• Optimizing disk image structure to save space;

• Creating boot disks and floppy disks with boot sectors for DOS (MS-DOS, PC-DOS, FreeDOS, etc.), Windows NT, or syslinux;

• Creating boot USB flash drives with dual USB-HDD and USB-ZIP modes;

• The ability to extract hard drive and floppy disk boot sectors;

• Compatibility with DAEMON Tools and Alcohol 120%.

Working with formats

UltraISO for Windows uses a proprietary ISZ format. The abbreviation is "ISO Zipped," but it is not just a zip archive. The format uses ZLIB or BZIP2 for data compression and can support AES encryption. The format specification is publicly available on EZB Systems's website but without some important points, such as obfuscation of the data table and the data itself. Despite this, third-party proprietary applications, such as Daemon Tools, also supported the format.

The name of the program is related to the ISO 9660 international standard. It combines regular CDs and DVDs and makes them compatible with popular operating systems. There is also support for the UDF file system primarily designed to work with DVDs. It is possible to set the RockRidge extension (to store attributes), Joliet (to remove file name limitations), and HFS (for compatibility with Mac OS). In addition to ISO, various image formats are supported, including the famous BIN, CUE, and MDF.

Interface

The interface of the program has not changed much over the years. It has remained classic, minimalistic, and even a bit old-fashioned. The program window consists of four areas:

• The area with the image is to be edited.

• The area with the image content is on the right.

• The areas with the image directory and the catalog of the final shot are at the bottom.

The menu bar contains items such as File, Actions, Bootable, Tools, Options, and Help. Let's consider these items in more detail:

• The File menu contains basic operations with images, such as creating, opening, checking the CRC value, and working with IML;

• The Actions menu is designed for working with files, extracting, and adding them;

• The Bootable menu allows you to create and extract data from floppy disks and hard drives, as well as create boot/multiboot disks;

• In the Tools menu, you can find additional commands for editing the image, such as conversion, compression, and testing. Conversion is available in the formats of the standard ISO image, BIN image, NRG image, compressed ISZ image, Alcohol MDS image, and CloneCD;

• The Options menu has only interface settings: a small collection of skins, a selection of the used language, and the use of sounds;

• The Help menu is standard for all similar programs; it has a manual, an "About" section, and a link to the forum.

Under the menu bar, there is a toolbar that duplicates the primary frequently used functions of the menu bar. There is also a small but very convenient detail: after installing UltraISO, there is a "Mount using UltraISO" option in the right-click menu. You no longer need to run the emulator manually to mount the image: right-click on it and select this option. You can use the picture because it's already in a virtual drive. This is a very nice additional feature to an already excellent program.

Why should you install this program?

The user-friendly interface (although it may seem complicated to beginners), low system requirements, and advanced functionality make the program stand out among similar tools. UltraISO for Windows is associated with quality, useful features, and reliability.