Disk Image File Extensions

What is Disk Image? Understanding Disk Image Formats

Overview

Disk image is a file which stores entire content & structure of a disk or a volume. This disk could be hard disk, USB flash drive, tape drive or optical media such as CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray disk.

Besides, it uses various file extensions that includes .ISO, .DMG, .BIN, .VHD etc.

Common Use of Disk Image

Disk images came to the picture when floppy disks were highly popular. Thereafter, disk images have been being used to duplicate various disks.

In the beginning, disk images were used for backup and disk cloning of mainframe storage media.
Disk images are replica of a whole disk or a disk partition. Hence, they are often used for duplication of CD, DVD in .ISO file format.
MacOS distributes software in Apple Disk image (.DMG extension) when software are downloaded via browser.
Windows operating system also distributes software online as disk images (.ISO extension).
In virtualization, virtual machine monitor creates and store their virtual machines in a hard disk image (.VHD for Hyper-V & Xen, .VMDK for VMWare, .VDI for VirtualBox)

Application Category

Disk Image Files

MIME Type

application/x-disk-image

Most Common Disk Image Formats

.ISO

Binary image of CD/DVD

.DMG

Apple disk image file

.RAW

RAW disk image

.MDF

Alcohol 120% disc image

.NRG

Nero Burning ROM image file

.BIN

Binary disk image

How to open and view Disk Image File Extension

Disk Image can be opened in various software depend on their file format.

Tools that open Disk Image File Extension

Systools Disk Image Viewer

Professional Email Utility

Official Tool View Tool