What is a .BIN? What is a .CUE? What is an .ISO

What is an ISO image?

      An ISO image is simply a CD-ROM image saved in ISO-9660 format.ISO 9660 is an international standard originally devised for storing data on CD-ROM. ISO images are mainly used as source files from which to create CDs.The term ISO image is also used informally to refer to any optical disk image

What is BIN/.CUE?

The .BIN/.CUE image file format was developed by Jeff Arnold for the CDRWin program.                                                             The .BIN file contains an exact copy of all data stored on an optical disk in raw, unprocessed form but without subchannel data.The file contains all data stored on the original disk - not only its files and folders, but also system-specific information such as boot loaders, volume attributes, error correction codes and other metadata on the disk itself.                                                                    The .CUE file is a "cue sheet" that describes the data stored in the .BIN file. The .CUE file is a plain text file. A typical .CUE file is as follows

The file would be saved as IMAGE.CUE to match the file name prefix of IMAGE.BIN.

• You can burn them to a CD-R or a CD-RW with:
  Alcohol 120% -  excellent software, easy and yet very advanced (burns ISO, BIN/CUE, CCD, CDI, BWT files.
•  Blindwrite - easy to use.
•  FireBurner - also very good, a single .EXE file.
•  BurnAtOnce - A handy and FREE tool for burning .bin/.cue/.iso. Easy to use.
•  Nero - many of you have this, but it can't handle all image files.
•  CDRWin - This is the original BIN/CUE software.

You can also mount image files as virtual CD-ROM drives using
Alcohol  Or  Daemon Tools
There are also several softwares you can use to exploit & manipulate BIN/CUE files in various ways:
CDMage - http://www.geocities.com/cdmage/  &  IsoBuster

.BIN file  is with you but no .CUE file

.CUE can be made with just Notepad. A typical Playstation         (One or 2) .CUE file looks like this:
FILE "image-name.BIN" BINARY
TRACK 1 MODE2/2352
INDEX 1 00:00:00
A typical PC CD-ROM .CUE looks like this:
FILE "image-name.BIN" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE1/2352
INDEX 01 00:00:00
"image-name.BIN" being the name of the image file (IWDII.BIN, CIV3.BIN and so on...)

To  make .BIN/.CUE files

Blindwrite suite and CloneCD perform a lot better in this purpose and can also handle various copy protections. Both of these softwares can also create .CUE files for increased compatibility

Category: CD, Image, Tips, Tutorial, Utility