However, I was mildly surprised at the number of other applications on the CD, all I wanted was the 'Drive Image 7'. When I got the iso file, it was labelled 'Drive Image 7' and I wanted to try out this software for backing up my HDD. The CD has a number of different bootable OS's and a variety of software for diagnosing/troubleshooting computer systems. I actually forgot about this post, otherwise I would have posted the link to the article right away for others to see/learn. If anyone wants to read it, I'll try to find it again. There is actually only one(1) copy of any type of file and the rest are pointers to that file instead of having the same file numerous times on the CD.

I did actually find an article that explained what was happening to the data when you compress/optimize an image to be burned. Nic is correct as far as having multiple versions of OS's on the CD. Thanx for the advice/insight on the issue of. If not, then please llist the programs on the CD. It might help if you listed what is on the CD, but I figure I must be on the right track. The size will therefore be much larger and will not fit on a 'normal' CD. What you have done is extract multiple copies of the various files that only existed as a single copy in the image.

The problem you have is that once you have extracted the files, you don't have a similar tool to put them back in the same way. I've seen it several times with various software. I believe Microsoft has been known to use this format/technique when putting multiple versions of SQL Server on one CD, when under normal circumstances these wouldn't fit. If more than one application on that image file shares files with another, then rather than have two copies on the CD, it is possible (using special tools) to put just one file on the CD image and have the table of contents for each application point to the same physical file. I think you are talking about one of the special CDs that have more than one version of a particular application present.

How to compress iso