iso to img conversion

[tigervette]

I have a lot of iso files...most of them are over 4 GB. I'm trying to transfer them from my PC into my mac. Unfortunately mac doens't recognize NTFS partitions and FAT32 doesn't support file sizes larger than 4 GB. How can I make the Mac recognize these files other than getting an external hard drive and transferring the files to the mac hard drive. Also how can I mount a DVD image or change the iso to a img, or dmg file type? Any help would be greatly appreciated....=)

[gatorparrots]

ISO to dmg (drive image) conversion
You can accomplish this in the Terminal with this command:
hdiutil convert "/path/to/name.iso" -format UDRW -o "/path/to/output.dmg"

[Ripcord]

Tigervette, can you set up a simple network, or do you have one already? I'm guessing your Mac already has an ethernet card, and you can get one for your PC at your local CompUSA or whatever for $15 or less (assuming your PC also doesn't already have one).

You can just turn on SAMBA (Windows File Sharing), run Dave, or get one of hundreds of freeware utils to help you copy files between the two.

[tigervette]

I already have a network set up... for some strange reason the Mac recognized my NTFS hard drive and I transferred my dvd iso image to the mac.. I'm gonna try to use the terminal to convert the file to dmg. Will the dvd player play the dmg file? The iso files are images of dvds.

[Ripcord]

Hi tigervette,

There's not really a concept of "NTFS" or "FAT32" using Windows File Sharing (aka CIFS), which is why I suggested it. Glad to see you got it going.

I'm fairly positive that no DVD player will open a .DMG file directly and play from it. However, it's very simple to mount the DMG file (by double-clicking on it or opening it with Disk Image). I've never really used DVD on Mac, but I believe I've read several people say that Mac DVD players will play the .IFO and .VOB files in the VIDEO_TS directory (or treat the mounted image as a DVD)

However, if you made the .ISO file directly from a copy-protected DVD without decrypting it (which is technically illegal in the US, and some kid in Norway is actually being prosecuted for writing code to do this), then I'm guessing chances are, it will either look corrupted, crash when you try to play it, or the DVD player will complain that the file isn't valid.

I believe you can also use Toast to mount/convert the .ISO file too, can't you?

[tigervette]

I was trying to find a way to mount the ISO/DMG image into a virtual DVD-ROM drive similar to Daemon Tools for the PC. Does the Mac have a program that can create virtual drives? By doing this, the computer thinks that the DVD is actually in a drive and behaves as if there is a physical DVD there...

[gatorparrots]

That's the whole point of DiskCopy and .dmg/.img files: to the OS, they are a disc/disk image. Originally DiskCopy was intended to create images of floppies, but now the paradigm has been extended to include CDs, DVDs, and now other more exotic virtual drive types.

[tigervette]

Is there a limit to the size of the image iself?