PowerISO

PowerISO is a personal computer software application used to create, open, mount and emulate, compress, encrypt, and otherwise manipulate CD and DVD image files. It uses a proprietary disc image format, DAA, and supports other formats including ISO, BIN, NRG, and CDI. PowerISO is able to modify all supported CD images formats. PowerISO can create image files of up to 256GB; the free-of-charge trial version supports the same features, but cannot create or edit images greater than 300 megabytes.^[3] It adds adware after install.

PowerISO is currently produced by Power Software Ltd.

Features

Power ISO can create, edit or convert ISO image files or extract their contents. PowerISO can convert almost all image file formats to ISO image. It can also make bootable ISO file and floppy disk images. Existing images can be mounted on PowerISO's internal virtual drive and used like an ordinary disc.

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,^[4] 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^[5] 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^[6] 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

• OS image
• Comparison of ISO image software

References

External links

• Official website
• daa2iso application for Windows (source code included, and may be compiled for *nix / MacOSX without modification)
• DAA Converter for Mac OS X, graphical Mac interface for daa2iso