When we talk about Computing, the concept of "image" can have at least two meanings- A file that displays a visual presentation, such as a picture, a drawing, or a data storage image file, generally called "ISO image". The acronym" ISO ", used in the extension of these files, is nothing more than the acronym for International Standardization Organization, since the creation and edition of these documents is governed by regulation 9660 of this world quality systematization body. .
This ISO image can contain all the data of a storage unit, such as a CD, a DVD, a Blueray device, a hard disk, a USB stick, a memory card, a micro-SD from a smartphone, the contents of a zipdrive and many other possible variants.
In general, ISO images are carried out with the aim of create backups, but more than anything they are used in data cloning. Thus, if we need to make an exact copy of all the data from one hard drive to another, we will make an image of the first and dump it on the second. This saves us time when setting up Windows computers that have been infected with computer viruses or compromised with various forms of malware or spyware. In the same way, they are useful when performing massive installations of any operating system: Windows, GNU / Linux, Mac OS X, BSD, Android, etc. In any case, such a method makes more sense in Windows, a system that brings with it basic utilities aimed at non-professional use.
A ISO image, then, it is nothing more than a file that contains an identical copy of an entire file system, generally burned on a DVD, and governed by the aforementioned international standard.
Systems software free like BSD or GNU / Linux They are distributed in the form of ISO images: in order to use and "give life" to these images, it is necessary to use a CD / DVD recording program that allows us to "burn as an ISO image". In return, many experts point to their role in digital piracy as a disadvantage of ISO images, since it is possible to copy complete discs with copyrighted programs, movies, music albums and many other variants of digital media quickly, simply and easily. very easy distribution. As with other technological tools, creating and editing ISO images is not itself good or bad, whereas the use for which it is used is.
It is good to know that ISO images can be loaded into a virtual machine running on any operating system, thus saving the restart of the computer to test its benefits, or increasing the functionality of a computer system, being able to run several systems at the same time in a single computer. This is particularly interesting for those home users looking to gain experience with a new system (such as those who use Windows and try to migrate to Linux) or for those programmers who develop digital resources for multiple platforms, since it is thus possible for them to operate on a same computer with different operating systems.
Although ISO files generally have an .iso extension, there are other similar formats such as .cue / .bin, NRG, CIF, CCD, BWI, MDF, CSO, UIF, or ISZ. Most of these formats are legible in all programs for editing and copying these images and in many cases they have a high degree of compatibility with each other.
It is recommended use download managers like Filezilla to save time and bandwidth. It happens that, understandably, ISO images almost exactly preserve the magnitude in bytes of the multiple files that gave rise to them; consequently, an image obtained from a Windows installation DVD, for example, can easily "weigh" 4 gigabytes, while a complete copy of a hard disk could be even larger. In this context, download managers offer both higher speed, on the one hand, and the ability to pause and resume the download of the ISO image in a timely manner for the user, on the other.
Therefore, ISO images represent a fabulous strategy for making backups and to transmit large information packages between different computers.
