Ten years ago, when most hard drives had capacities around 1-2GB, the CD was a great tool for data storage. Today's hard drives should be large enough for everybody, but the CD still has some time left to live.

CD images are files that store complete data information from the disc, including boot information. The standard that is generally used is the now famous ISO9660, and this is why CD/DVD image files are usually called ISO files.

There is a lot to say about these subjects, but I am not your IT History teacher, my purpose now is to show you a tool that's related with what I've just said. What kind of tool?

UltraISO Premium is the name of the program that I am targeting now. Its purpose? Create, edit, convert and burn CD/DVD image files, even more, but we'll discover its features right away...

The installation package is under 3MB in size, and the setup process will finish in a flash. The version I have here is a trial version with feature limitations (in fact it's just one limitation, you can't save files larger than 300MB).

The interface of the program is easy to use, has all main features accessible using the toolbar icons and fully supports drag and drop operations.

What kind of images can you create with UltraISO? The available options can be seen in the File>New menu, and they include audio CDs, mixed media and even DVD using UDF file system in order to accommodate files larger than 2GB, but not limited to these. Once you have created an image, you have to use the file browser to find the content you want to add and drag it inside the image window.

Disc images can be burned from UltraISO without problems, and the other way around. Just use the Tools menu's first function or press the F8 key in order to make a CD/DVD copy on your hard drive.

Going back to the audio CDs, you can preview tracks inside the program or extract MP3 and WMV data to WAV, since you need to have the source files in WAV format to successfully complete this operation.

UltraISO can also create and verify checksums or compress existing image files (resulting ISZ files), but I think that the best way is to check all the features by yourselves.

I only have two words to say for now: try it!


The Good

UltraISO is everything you can ask from a program of its family. It can read almost any file format out there, add or remove files to/from an existing image, create CD/DVD images from your discs or burn images, and more. Its Help file is good to get you started and it has support for over 30 languages!


The Bad

Even though it can open a lot of file types, UltraISO can only save into six of them. The trial version will only save files having maximum 300MB in size. I guess it should be something really bad to say about this...but that's not the way i see it. Period.


The Truth

UltraISO Platinum is one of the best programs from its family. If it's the best, that's something only up to you and your needs. I've been using it for more than two years and found nothing bad so far, and all I can do is advise you to get it for a free run in order to decide whether to buy it or not.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: