ISO Burned or Copied ?

How can I determine whether an ISO file (perhaps the correct term is image ?) has been actually burned onto a CD or whether it was just copied to the CD ?

Dumb_Question
4.January.2014

 

David, thank you for answering so quickly. I'm afraid I didn't understand your post. So if your original ISO contained only one file, then you won't be able to tell ? The file one on the CD I created will be the same ? :confused

When I hover my mouse pointer over file's icon, either the file on my HD or the file I created from it on the CD, I get 'Type: ISO file' and they are both the same size to within one hundredth of 1MB. I'm using Windows XP.

(my CD drive has mysteriously started recognizing this CD)

Dumb_Question
4.January.2014

Compaq Presario S5160UK DT261A under XP/SP3
Processor - Celeron 2.7 GHz
Motherboard - MSI MS-6577 v2.1
RAM - 1GB + 512MB (1GB +1GB max) DDR PC2700
PSU - Octigen 300W model 10270PSOTG ('upgraded' from original Bestec 250W PSU [in 2011?])
Nvidia GeForce 6200 graphics card in AGP slot.

 

I've never come across an ISO file that contained only one file but I suppose someone might do it with say, an installer program. Although I can't imagine why someone would convert an executable file into an ISO file format. Supposing however that someone did that, the extracted file would have a different file name and it's astronomically unlikely that it would have the same size (files in an ISO are typically compressed).

If the file on your hard drive and the file on CD have the same name and exactly the same size, then it's safe to assume that you simply copied the ISO file to CD rather than "burning" it to CD. If the ISO files have different sizes (no matter how small the difference) then one of two things happened:

1. The copy operation was faulty and did not exactly duplicate the file to CD
2. You burned to CD an ISO file that contained another (different) ISO file, and that would be really weird.

It sounds to me like you simply copied the ISO to CD. What program did you use to do whatever it was that you did to the ISO file? To truly "burn" an ISO file to CD (as that term is typically used) you would have needed to use a bone fide CD burning app like BurnAway, Nero, CDBurnerXP, ImgBurn (to name a few).

What does Windows report as being on the CD?

 

A quick reply, more when I get to the computer in question (eg exactly what is on the CD, screen shot from Explorer. I think that's the only file on the CD). Thanks for your answers meantime.

I can tell you that the file in question is SeaTools for DOS, which is easily downloaded from www.seagate.com (hover over 'support', when a drop down menu appears, move down to downloads, when a further menu appears, and then select Seatools, and from the resulting page go to SeaTools for DOS tutorial, and near the top are the downloads IIRC. I think it's 8.45MB (8,661KB).

I used either Alex Feinman's program (as one of the example recommended CD burning programs by Seagate), or CDBurnerXP. I remember I had to add the ISO to a list, then burn selected files to the CD from the list(the first time it told me the list was empty). It's looking like I copied the file to my CD not burned it, I must have done something wrong. If I used CDBurnXP I might have used the top option (data disk) rather than the 3rd one down (Burn a CD) [or something like that]

Why I asked is my PCs won't boot from the CD even though it's supposed to be bootable and the boot order is floppy - CD - HD. But I made the floppy version as well, and that seemed to work but won't boot from that either.

Dumb_Question
4.January.2014

Compaq Presario S5160UK DT261A under XP/SP3
Processor - Celeron 2.7 GHz
Motherboard - MSI MS-6577 v2.1
RAM - 1GB + 512MB (1GB +1GB max) DDR PC2700
PSU - Octigen 300W model 10270PSOTG ('upgraded' from original Bestec 250W PSU [in 2011?])
Nvidia GeForce 6200 graphics card in AGP slot.

 

see attached picture, top left is what's on the CD (one file), to the right are the properties of that file, and to the lower left are the properties of the downloaded ISO file on my HD.

Dumb_Question
4.January.2014

Compaq Presario S5160UK DT261A under XP/SP3
Processor - Celeron 2.7 GHz
Motherboard - MSI MS-6577 v2.1
RAM - 1GB + 512MB (1GB +1GB max) DDR PC2700
PSU - Octigen 300W model 10270PSOTG ('upgraded' from original Bestec 250W PSU [in 2011?])
Nvidia GeForce 6200 graphics card in AGP slot.

 

Here's a look inside the ISO file. If you truly "burned" the ISO to disk, then you should see these same files & directories on the CD when viewed with Explorer.

 

So I copied the downloaded to my CD ? And it being a CD-R to create what I want I have to repeat the whole process (correctly) with a new CD-R ?

Dumb_Question
4.January.2014

Compaq Presario S5160UK DT261A under XP/SP3
Processor - Celeron 2.7 GHz
Motherboard - MSI MS-6577 v2.1
RAM - 1GB + 512MB (1GB +1GB max) DDR PC2700
PSU - Octigen 300W model 10270PSOTG ('upgraded' from original Bestec 250W PSU [in 2011?])
Nvidia GeForce 6200 graphics card in AGP slot.

 

Unfortunately, Yes. If you're using CDBurnerXP, use "Burn ISO Image" (fourth button from the top). That should create a bootable CD. I say "should" only because I don't know for certain that it's a bootable ISO you are trying to burn. It's possible to use the ISO format for archiving/compression purposes only, similar to ZIP or RAR but that's pretty rare (no pun intended) in my experience. I can't imagine that a big company like Seagate would distribute non-bootable ISO files to it's customers.

OK, I just checked the ISO using ISOBuster and it reports that it IS a bootable image, so just go ahead and burn it as instructed above and you'll have your bootable CD containing the Seagate software. Sorry about the circuitous explanation.

 

Thank you RustySavage and DavidGP.

I found a blank CD-R and used CDBurnXP to 'burn an image' of the ISO I had downloaded, using 4th down option (not 3rd down as I mistakenly said earlier).

This CD I could boot from and it booted into SeaTools, but having verified that, I did not take it further. Doubtless I will back with more questions (in a new thread) when I get round to get to working with that.

Dumb_Question
5.January.2014

Compaq Presario S5160UK DT261A under XP/SP3
Processor - Celeron 2.7 GHz
Motherboard - MSI MS-6577 v2.1
RAM - 1GB + 512MB (1GB +1GB max) DDR PC2700
PSU - Octigen 300W model 10270PSOTG ('upgraded' from original Bestec 250W PSU [in 2011?])
Nvidia GeForce 6200 graphics card in AGP slot.

 

Just make sure you read the documentation that came with the program. Unlike the Seagate SeaTools for Windows, which is completely safe to use, you can trash data if you incorrectly use the DOS version. I see the documentation is in PDF format. Just put the CD in your optical drive and if I remember correctly, the autorun.inf file is configured to open the PDF file automatically. If that doesn't happen then simply use Windows Explorer to browse the CD and open the PDF file directly.

 

Thanks for the reminder, RustySavage

I noticed some PDFs when looking at the contents of the new CD.

When it booted, it booted straight into the program as per the tutorial on the Seagate Website.

I was planning to try a low-level format on a disk anyway (maybe I will post on this attempt after I have tried it and found something unexpected)

Dumb_Question
6.January.2014