29 February 2008

By: Ionut Ilascu, Editor, Software Reviews

The New UltraISO #9
Additional functionality included

UltraISO

Someone said on some forum that soon the age of optical drives would come to an end andthat softwares like UltraISO would soon become useless. The truth is that this is far fromhappening, especially when Blu-ray won the HD war and it's just started to warm up. Plus,
optical media is the best solution for long term keeping of files; I have a 7 years old CD thatstill works with no problems (although I probably should make a copy, just to stay on thesafe side).
But our interest today is the latest version of UltraISO, so let's get to it while it's still hot (itwas released yesterday). At a first glance, the version number 9 of the software does notseem to have brought changes, but a closer look will reveal its extended functionality. The
same limitation is maintained in the trial version, so you still can't use the application forworking with more than 300MB worth of files.
The interface preserved its looks and the same explorer functionality is available, with dual
panes for viewing both local files and folders as well as the structure of the image. Adding
files from one part to another is easily achieved with a drag and drop operation or by using
the context menus of both panels. Simply put, UltraISO is that sort of the software you can't
possibly find hard to use, maybe a little confusing at the beginning, but, once you've grownaccustomed with it, you cannot but appreciate its display of options in the window and thedual pane structure of the interface.
UltraISO comes as a great solution for ISO image format management, as well as otherpopular compressed image formats on the market. Its price tag reads $29.99, which is wellunder the software's real worth, especially with the latest improvements.
Application's capabilities are pretty extensive, allowing the user easy manipulation of acompressed image by compressing it even more, writing it on a disc, mounting it on a virtualdrive, create an image from a disc or convert the image to different other formats. And on
top of all this, it can also create bootable Cds/DVDs. Editing ISO images is no longer a time
consuming chore as you can add and delete files in an image with the effort of pressing
Delete button of your keyboard or dragging desired files inside.
Audio CDs can be saved under BIN/CUE, MDF/MDS, IMG/CCD/SUB or NRG image
formats and, from them, UltraISO can automatically burn another disc, a perfect replica ofthe original. No quality loss with little hassle. Ripping an Audio CD is a snap as all the effort
invested in the operation consists in opening the disc from UltraISO, selecting the storage
location for the files and dragging them there. The files are automatically saved as WAVE
sound, so there is no quality loss; later, you can encode them in a different, less spacecosting format like MP3 or OGG. Also, you can create an image of the disc for later use.
Mind that the application can create Audio CDs from WAV and MP3 files only.
When editing an image, the user has the possibility to create folders, add files anddirectories, or, my favorite option, hide some of the files. This way, you can mount the ISO
to a virtual drive but only the files you want will be visible. Everything else that has been set
to hide mode will not be seen, even if you turn on the view for hidden files.

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All ISO images can be mounted in a virtual drive created with UltraISO. The application canload up to 8 virtual devices and rack them up in your file manager very fast and with no
impact on the system. The procedure can be executed from the application's Configuration
menu, under Virtual Drive tab. If you already use a drive virtualization tool, UltraISO may
detect it and you can designate it as the default virtual drive program. One of thevirtualization tools the application can detect is Virtual CloneDrive, as you can see in thecorresponding picture at the end of the review.
UltraISO makes available recompiling of ISO when these are saved directly, backing themup automatically, creating file checksum upon saving the file, as well as generating
checksum of ISO image (MD5, CRC-16 under TXT format or CRC-32 under SVF format).
Disc burning software can also be automatically detected by UltraISO, but only if you areusing one of the top used apps for this operation: Nero or Roxio. Fortunately, just like in thecase of virtual drives, you can assign a program as default for disc burning.
Integration of the application into Windows shell makes its using more comfortable andsaves some time as well. The list of image formats it can be associated with is to be foundunder Integration tab of Configuration menu. Users familiar with the software will probably
notice that UltraISO has enriched the list of supported formats and DAA and UIF have been
added, extending its functionality a bit more.
Shrinking ISO images even more comes with a list of settings that stand as default. Sure,
when time comes you can customize them according to your needs. There are six different
compression levels to choose from, going from the "fastest" to "heavy compression" through"fast", "normal", "small" and "smallest". After compression, the resulting file will be in ISZ(ISoZipped) format which is somewhat equal to a compressed ISO.
If you go with "heavy compression" for shrinking an ISO, you'd better get busy withsomething else as the process is quite slow (actually is the slowest out of all the options).
During our testing, a 264.5MB ISO with audio files inside took about 13 minutes (actually itwas exactly 12'30'') to compress to an ISZ and most of the times the CPU power was over80%. As audio files do not support too much compression, the result was barely notable,but, when compressing an ISO containing mostly text files and images, the results wereremarkable as the file was reduced with 35%.
As any archive should support, UltraISO compressed format supports password
protection, which can be encrypted with either AES 128-bit or AES 256-bit algorithm, so it
should be pretty secure for you. Password's length is limited to 32 characters, which makes
for great protection in combination with AES encryption.
Converting to different other image formats is no sweat for UltraISO as it supports the mostpopular image formats: BIN/CUE, NRG, ISZ, MDF/MD5 or IMG/CCD/SUB. The application
supports a myriad of other image formats (over 30) belonging to about 20 applications.
Mac's DMG and HFS are also supported, although the latter is not supported by OS X.
Writing the image on disc with UltraISO is not too different than using a burning software.
You still get to set burn speed, write method (disc at once or track at once), you can erase
RW discs and the integrity of the job can be verified at the end. No need to mention that
only the image content will be burned and not the archive itself. The entire report of theoperation can be saved to your computer under TXT format.
UltraISO comes as a complete solution for managing ISO image and converting to aPage 2Copyright (c) 2001-2008 Softpedia. All rights reserved. Softpedia™ and Softpedia™ logo are registered trademarks of SoftNews NET SRL.

popular compressed image format a less popular one. It has added support for DAA andUIF format and permits compressing an ISO to smaller sizes (it depends on the file types
included in the archive) as well as burning them to disc. Additionally the application cancreate as many as eight virtual drives on your system and mount the images. Not tomention that it can create XBOX DVD, DVD Video, PS2 CD/DVD, Audio CD image,UNIXLinux CD image and even floppy image.

The Good
The application is extremely easy to use, as all windows are disposed logically in theinterface and it only takes a minute of your attention to learn all its goings on.
Supports a myriad of formats and can convert them quite easily into more popular image
formats.
Double paned view for image and local files, as well as drag and drop support between
them, really makes working with UltraISO a walk in the park.
Can archive ISO images to lower sizes and there are four levels for the user to choose
from. Reverse operation is also possible within UltraISO. The application can make animage of the entire hard disk, which you can mount on a virtual drive.
UltraISO is able to detect the disc burning software installed on your computer, as well assome software designed to create virtual drives.
The BadWe encountered trouble dismounting images from the virtual drives created by UltraISO in
Vista environment. Although the software gave the message that the drive is ejected, theimage previously mounted could still be accessed when the virtual drive was accessed.
Accessing "Make Multi-Boot CD/DVD" from Bootable menu automatically opens a page inthe browser pointing to the software that can do that.
The Truth
UltraISO performed beautifully during our testing and successfully completed any job wegave it, within the limitations of the trial version. With the new version, its functionality has
been extended further, adding support for DAA and UIF image formats.
Working with it is a breeze and although I've seen some complaints on the fact that its help
file is not too helpful for a neophyte, I must warn you that UltraISO is not for novices, butthey can easily make their way into application's functions with a bit of effort.
Bottom line is that it supports almost all known image file formats and can convert them tothe ISO standard. For easier access, it integrates in Windows shell so its main functions canbe accessed at a right click.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:

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Copyright (c) 2001-2008 Softpedia. All rights reserved. Softpedia™ and Softpedia™ logo are registered trademarks of SoftNews NET SRL.