Editing Optical disc image (section)

== Multiple-track images ==

A CD can have multiple [[track (CD)|tracks]], which can contain computer data, audio, or video. [[File system]]s such as [[ISO 9660]] are stored inside one of these tracks. Since ISO images are expected to contain a binary copy of the file system and its contents, there is no concept of a "track" inside an ISO image, since a track is a container for the contents of an ISO image. This means that CDs with multiple tracks can not be stored inside a single ISO image; at most, an ISO image will contain the data inside one of those multiple tracks, and only if it is stored inside a standard file system.

This also means that [[Compact Disc Digital Audio|audio CD]]s, which are usually composed of multiple tracks, can not be stored inside an ISO image. Furthermore, not even a single track of an audio CD can be stored as an ISO image, since audio tracks do not contain a file system inside them, but only a continuous stream of encoded audio data. This audio is stored on [[Track (CD)#Subchannels|sectors of 2352 bytes]] different from those that store a file system and it is not stored inside files; it is addressed with ''track numbers'', ''index points'' and a ''CD time code'' that are encoded into the [[Lead-in (CD)|lead-in]] of each session of the CD-Audio disc.

[[Video CD]]s and [[Super Video CD]]s require at least two tracks on a CD, so it is also not possible to store an image of one of these discs inside an ISO image file, however an .IMG file can achieve this.

Formats such as [[Cue sheet (computing)|CUE/BIN]], [[CloneCD Control File|CCD/IMG]] and [[MDF and MDS file pair|MDS/MDF]] formats can be used to store multi-track disc images, including audio CDs. These formats store a raw disc image of the complete disc, including information from all tracks, along with a companion file describing the multiple tracks and the characteristics of each of those tracks. This would allow an optical media burning tool to have all the information required to correctly burn the image on a new disc. For audio CDs, one can also transfer the audio data into uncompressed audio files like [[WAV]] or [[Audio Interchange File Format|AIFF]], optionally reserving the metadata (see [[Ripping|CD ripping]]).

Most software that is capable of writing from ISO images to hard disks or recordable media (CD / DVD / BD) is generally not able to write from ISO disk images to [[USB flash drive|flash drive]]s. This limitation is more related to the availability of software tools able to perform this task, than to problems in the format itself. However, since 2011, various software has existed to write raw image files to USB flash drives.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://imagetousb.com/iso-image-to-usb-conversion/ | title=ISO image to USB conversion | publisher=ISO to USB burning tool | access-date=15 February 2015 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150215102916/http://imagetousb.com/iso-image-to-usb-conversion/ | archive-date=15 February 2015 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.poweriso.com/tutorials/how-to-make-win7-bootable-usb-drive.htm | title=How to Setup Windows 7 or Windows 8 from USB drive? | publisher=PowerISO | access-date=15 February 2015 | archive-date=20 June 2016 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160620222349/http://www.poweriso.com/tutorials/how-to-make-win7-bootable-usb-drive.htm | url-status=live }}</ref>