ISO 13490

Last updated

ISO/IEC 13490 (also known as ECMA-168) is the successor to ISO 9660 (level 3), intended to describe the file system of a CD-ROM or CD-R.

Contents

ISO 13490 has several improvements over its predecessor. It fully addresses the filename, POSIX attribute, and multibyte character issues that were not handled by ISO 9660. It is also a more efficient format, permits incremental recording, and permits both the ISO 9660 format and ISO/IEC 13490 format to co-exist on the same media. It also specifies how to use multisession properly.

It is derived from the Frankfurt Group (formed in 1990 by many CD-ROM and CD-WO hardware and media manufacturers, CD-ROM data publishers, users of CD-ROMs, and major computer companies [1] ) proposal and fully supports orange book media.

Multiple session overview

ISO 13490 define a rule for operating systems as to how to read a multiple-session ISO 9660 volume from a CD-R. Instead of looking for the volume descriptor at offset 32,768 (sector number 16 on a CD) from the start of the disc (which would be the default behavior in ISO 9660), programs accessing the disc should start reading from the 16th sector in the first track of the latest session. Sector numbers form a contiguous sequence starting at the first session, and continue over added sessions and their gaps.

Hence, if a CD mastering program wants to add a single file to a CD-R that has an ISO 9660 volume, it has to append a session containing at least an updated copy of the entire directory tree, plus the new file. The duplicated directory entries can still reference the data files in the previous session(s).

In a similar way, file data can be updated or even removed. Removal is, however, only virtual: the removed content does not appear any more in the directory shown to the user, but it is still physically present on the disc. It can therefore be recovered, and it takes up space (such that the CD will become full even though appearing to still have unused space).

Support

Though it was originally intended for multisession support only to apply to Mode 2 Form 1 formatted discs, some CD writing software supported multisession writing to Mode 1 format discs. Since only some of the early disc drives supported multisession Mode 1 discs, in many cases the second and following sessions would become unreachable in some drives.

Some older CD writing software, such as Nero Burning ROM, would not import previous session data from an inserted disc. It could thus only write a subsequent session to a disc on the same computer that had written all the previous sessions, and then only if the previous session data was saved before the writing software was closed down.

See also

Related Research Articles

ISO 9660 File system for CD-R and CD-ROM optical discs

ISO 9660 is a file system for optical disc media. Being sold by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) the file system is considered an international technical standard. Since the specification is available for anybody to purchase, implementations have been written for many operating systems.

Universal Disk Format (UDF) is a profile of the specification known as ISO/IEC 13346 and ECMA-167 and is an open vendor-neutral file system for computer data storage for a broad range of media. In practice, it has been most widely used for DVDs and newer optical disc formats, supplanting ISO 9660. Due to its design, it is very well suited to incremental updates on both recordable and (re)writable optical media. UDF was developed and maintained by the Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA).

Live CD

A live CD is a complete bootable computer installation including operating system which runs directly from a CD-ROM or similar storage device into a computer's memory, rather than loading from a hard disk drive. A Live CD allows users to run an operating system for any purpose without installing it or making any changes to the computer's configuration. Live CDs can run on a computer without secondary storage, such as a hard disk drive, or with a corrupted hard disk drive or file system, allowing data recovery.

An ISO image is a disk image of an optical disc. In other words, it is an archive file that contains everything that would be written to an optical disc, sector by sector, including the optical disc file system. ISO image files bear the .iso filename extension. The name ISO is taken from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) ISO 9660 file system used with CD-ROM media, but what is known as an ISO image might also contain a UDF file system.

Optical disc authoring content publishing on optical disks

Optical disc authoring, including DVD and Blu-ray Disc authoring, is the process of assembling source material—video, audio or other data—into the proper logical volume format to then be recorded ("burned") onto an optical disc.

K3b

K3b is a CD and DVD authoring application by KDE for Unix-like computer operating systems. It provides a graphical user interface to perform most CD/DVD burning tasks like creating an Audio CD from a set of audio files or copying a CD/DVD, as well as more advanced tasks such as burning eMoviX CD/DVDs. It can also perform direct disc-to-disc copies. The program has many default settings which can be customized by more experienced users. The actual disc recording in K3b is done by the command line utilities cdrecord or cdrkit, cdrdao, and growisofs. As of version 1.0, K3b features a built-in DVD ripper.

Rainbow Books Book series that contains the specifications of Compact Discs

The Rainbow Books is a collection of CD format specifications.

Ecma International Standards organization for information and communication systems

Ecma is a standards organization for information and communication systems. It acquired its current name in 1994, when the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) changed its name to reflect the organization's global reach and activities. As a consequence, the name is no longer considered an acronym and no longer uses full capitalization.

CD/DVD copy protection is a blanket term for various methods of copy protection for CDs and DVDs. Such methods include DRM, CD-checks, Dummy Files, illegal tables of contents, over-sizing or over-burning the CD, physical errors and bad sectors. Many protection schemes rely on breaking compliance with CD and DVD standards, leading to playback problems on some devices.

UltraISO

UltraISO is an application for Microsoft Windows for creating, modifying and converting ISO image files used for optical disc authoring, currently being produced by EZB Systems.


IMG, in computing, refers to binary files with the .img filename extension that store raw disk images of floppy disks, hard drives, and optical discs or a bitmap image – .img.

A mixed mode CD is a Compact Disc which contains both data and audio in one session. Typically the first track is a data track while the rest are audio tracks. The most common use for mixed mode CDs is to add CD-quality audio to video games on a CD.

A hybrid disc is a disc, such as CD-ROM or Blu-ray, which contains multiple types of data which can be used differently on different devices. These include CD-ROM music albums containing video files viewable on a personal computer, or feature film Blu-rays containing interactive content when used with a PlayStation 3 game console.

Blue Book (CD standard)

The Blue Book is a compact disc standard developed in 1995 by Philips and Sony. It defines the Enhanced Music CD format, which combines audio tracks and data tracks on the same disc. The format was created as a way to solve the problem of mixed mode CDs, which were not properly supported by many CD players.

An NRG file is a proprietary optical disc image file format originally created by Nero AG for the Nero Burning ROM utility. It is used to store disc images. Other than Nero Burning ROM, however, a variety of software titles can use these image files. For example, Alcohol 120%, or Daemon Tools can mount NRG files onto virtual drives for reading.

MagicISO

MagicISO is a CD/DVD image shareware utility that can extract, edit, create, and burn disc image files. It offers the possibility of converting between ISO and CUE/BIN and their proprietary Universal Image Format disc image format.

CD-ROM Pre-pressed compact disc containing computer data

A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write to or erase—CD-ROMs.

This article is a comparison of notable software applications that can access or manipulate disk image files. It compares their disk image handling features.

LabelTag can create a circular label on the data side of any DVD+R, DVD-R, or CD-R disc containing basic information visible to the eye. When burning the data, the label is printed directly behind that data in the same recording session, and on normal recording speed on the same recording layer side. LabelTag works on any disc and does not require a special disc like LightScribe. Currently, LabelTag is an exclusive technology of Lite-On for its DVD writer drives.

References

  1. "Standard ECMA-168" (PDF). ECMA. Retrieved 24 May 2017.