taltamir Posted February 19, 2011 Share Posted February 19, 2011 (edited) How exactly do the various file formats supported by IMGBurn differ? Which is the best to use when creating an image and why? I also noticed that ISO will create an mds file, which I thought were exclusive to mdf. What use is it? Edited February 19, 2011 by taltamir Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianymaty Posted February 19, 2011 Share Posted February 19, 2011 Don't worry about image file formats. ImgBurn will make the appropriate format for the disc content. Let it choose what it wants. Most of the times it will be ISO and sometimes will be CUE/BIN. The MDS file type is primarily associated with 'Media Descriptor'. This file is used by several different programs. It generally is found with an .ISO CD image file and is the equivalent of what a .CUE file is to a .BIN image. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
taltamir Posted February 19, 2011 Author Share Posted February 19, 2011 @ISF guru: thanks for the fast response. I am not worried so much as curious. I had already noticed that ImgBurn will make smart selections of format, it tells me a format is unsuited for whatever I am doing and chooses a better one. It still asks me to choose between several different formats (which are all viable) depending on what I do. I am trying to decide which one to actually use when that happens. As far as mds goes, I have seen it before with MDF, I am not aware of any program that actually uses it for reading ISO files, everything I have just opens ISO files directly without the MDS. Could you please name a specific program that actually uses an MDS for an ISO file so I could look it up? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LIGHTNING UK! Posted February 19, 2011 Share Posted February 19, 2011 ImgBurn does DAEMON Tools does Alcohol 120% does Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
taltamir Posted February 19, 2011 Author Share Posted February 19, 2011 (edited) ImgBurn does DAEMON Tools does Alcohol 120% does Thank you. I don't see any info on how those benefit from the mds file. I have used the ISO directly without the mds file in all 3 of those without a hitch. What does using the mds in those programs add compared to just opening the ISO directly? Edited February 19, 2011 by taltamir Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LIGHTNING UK! Posted February 19, 2011 Share Posted February 19, 2011 An ISO is dumb. It contains no information about where it came from - media format, TOC, layer break position etc. That's where the MDS comes in. It can hold all that information so images can be emulated/burnt more accurately. You might not notice a difference between them, but sometimes there is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
taltamir Posted February 19, 2011 Author Share Posted February 19, 2011 Thank you for the clarification. It sounds like the mds would help when there is anything unusual about the ISO that the program cannot otherwise guess, probably subchannel data. Does Img format contain any such info then? is there any format that contains all that info without the hassle of using two separate files? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts