Monthly Archives: June 2012

DMG Image Files Explained

DMG files are disk image files used by Macintosh OS for backing up CDs or DVDs.

They are specific to Apple computers only. In order to view this file extension you need a Mac OSX system. DMG files are used to store all types of data like pictures, movies, documents, software etc on a virtual drive and the file transfer is very easy.

DMG-FileYou might want to take under consideration that the only OS capable to read all files like real disks is Macintosh.

If you’re on Windows, you should use dmg2iso software to convert DMG files to ISO files and to be able to run on your computer. Macintosh OS X is the one who creates them with its feature called Disk Copy and is able to read them as normal true CDs.

After converting to ISO, images can be easily burnt to a CD using any burning tool or they can be mount as virtual drives with apps like ISO Hunt or Daemon Tools (and there are many more).

To open .DMG files you can also use the IsoBuster program and you can convert the files into ISO files after you perform the extraction of the files. As a general fact, some DMG files can be protected via password and cannot be mounted through additional software.

Unlike ISO files, DMG files cannot offer a medium for storage and the information can only be transferred on CD or DVD or directly on the Internet. The image is mounted on the system and then the operating system will create a drive icon on the sidebar of the desktop.

Burning a DMG file can be easily done by dragging ad burning the image and the result will have similar format as the original image. To un-mount the DMG files you can only click on the eject image on the desktop. The short keyboard command for this is CMD E, but if you want to benefit of the latest upgrades when using this function, it is very simple to upgrade your entire operating system.

The DMG files can be erased from system but there is the possibility of reinstalling and even store them. To do this, it is not compulsory to have the original CD as you may find residuals in the hard drives.

Also, DMG files have different formats, so a special software is required to mount them, such a program would be TransMac. This type of file is used by Oracle Export and Import Utility.

How to Open and Mount BIN Files

One of the methods used to retrieve and store the complete data from a CD or DVD is to create an image file of that disk using software that has this feature, be it paid or free. One of the file types for such image files is the BIN file. This means that the file has .BIN extension. This is able to store large amount of data, in a format exactly the same like the one in the original disk. In order to use this image file, you must use an application that can burn the images to other disks. For this, a CUE file is also needed; this one contains all the general information about the BIN file, including its full name.

mount-bin-fileAccess to the contents in a BIN file can be obtained by loading the BIN file into a program that provides this kind of support. This means that a virtual drive will be made available and the image contents will be loaded in it, exactly as if you had a CD or DVD and put it in the optical device.

A BIN file can be used in more than one way. Besides replicating the contents of CDs and DVDs, there are other situations in which these are present. For example, the printers’ drivers use BIN files and Windows itself uses bin files for Simple Network Managing Protocol (SNMP).

Another important use for the BIN files is the storage. As online gaming becomes more and more popular these days, storing games and game settings can be a problem of space and accessing speed. Using a smart archiving system, BIN files can be stored in .ZIP files and, after unpacking the package, these are restored to their initial and full size and formats.

BIN file type is only one from several types to describe the usages mentioned above. There are also ISO, NRG and CUE files that have the same properties of replicating, storing and restoring the data from CDs and DVDs. Generally, the software that creates the image files is also able to burn them on new disks. Nero is one such program, very common and easy to use, produced by Ahead Software. Some other software, like Magic ISO, allows you not only to create, burn and load the image, but also to access and edit it.

In order to mount these images (to restore them as if they were actual CDs and DVDs, software like Magic ISO, Nero or Daemon Tools can be used.

Mounting and Opening UIF Files

A good method of backing up the data from CDs or DVDs is creating and manipulating UIF files, which are a slightly improved version of a more known ISO file. Unlike the ISO, the UIF (universal image format) file provides a few advanced features, like storing multi session disk images in the same file and can be, at the same time, password protection and encryption as well. Therefore, the UIF files are basically very compressed exact images of CDs and DVDs.

Opening-UIF-FilesIn order to get the job done, it is important to know how to manipulate UIF files. The first thing you must know is that it’s a file format that is proprietarily used by Magic ISO software. Given the fact that this software is not free, you can either buy it directly from magiciso.com or download a free trial version from the same website. These are the only two options you have if you want to manipulate (open, use) UIF files, because this file format is supported only by the Magic ISO for the time being, meaning that no other software can do that yet.

Fortunately, the free trial of Magic ISO allows you both to open and / or convert the UIF files to a more common format, let’s say ISO format, but only of a size smaller than 300 MB. The ISO format is very popular because it can be used by almost all image manipulating software available.

Another option of using the UIF files is to mount them to virtual drives, using a software at your choice from a lot of free ones available on the internet, such as Magic Disc. Just chose the Mount Image option from the software menu and point to the UIF file location and that’s really all about it. If converting the UIF files to ISO ones, other software can be used as well (Daemon Tools, Power ISO, etc).

What Is a WPS File And How To Open It

Files with WPS extension are specific to Microsoft environment and represent a Microsoft Works document. Unfortunately, these documents are not very well supported and dealt with by Microsoft and are to be avoided to work with. However, if you do get stuck with WPS documents, there are two important ways of manipulating them: the first is trying to convert them to a Microsoft Word document – which also gives you the possibility of editing it – or, should this not work, try to get a WPS viewer software.

WPS-Files-ExplainedIf choosing the software download, you can locate and get the Word Viewer 2003, which allows you only to view documents and not to edit them, but would work just fine with documents of many extensions beside the WPS one, like DOC, WPD, RTF and XML. Concerning the Microsoft Works documents, it will serve you well for versions 6 and 7 of the software.

If this alternative doesn’t suit you, for any reasons, you can go for a Microsoft Works 6 to 9 File Converter, which allows you to bring the WPS files in a DOC format. But this is only suitable in situations in which the WPS document is generated by MS Works versions 6 to 9, of course. If it is older than that, an older WPS File Converter must be found and used, like the one that bring the file in a Word 2000 readable format.

However, there is a third way that is possible only in the newest Microsoft Office versions, that of using MS Word itself to open the Works format. This works, because Microsoft implemented the needed functions to achieve that and make the use of Works files easier. Basically it automatically downloads the conversion functions to match the WPS file you would want to open and use.

What is a DAT File, How To Open and Read One

There are not few situations in which somebody receives some files, be it as attachments in an email, or directly on a memory stick and doesn’t know what kind of files they are or how to open those files. One of these cases has as a subject DAT files and we’ll try to explain the user what these files are, what to be expected of them and how to open and use them.

The first thing that needs to be said about these files, are that DAT files are not associated with a particular software, like other, more popular, are. For example, a JPG file is known to be a image file that can be opened with any installed picture viewing software, or a PPT file that belongs to Microsoft PowerPoint. DAT files contain arbitrary, even random data and each time can be opened and viewed with another program than the last time. There is no association between the DAT extension and any known software.

So how can we find the right application to open a DAT file? Well, in case you don’t know the program that created the file and are able to use it to open it, you can begin trying several programs. The handiest one would be Notepad, which might be able to show you parts of the content at least that could seem familiar to you and recognize a format that is specific to a certain application.

However, there aren’t many programs that can generate DAT output files, so the most probable environment to come across such files is the email world, where these are present mostly as attachments. In this case, the quickest way is to ask directly the person who sent it to you what was the program that created the file, or what type was the file he or she attached, because there is another possibility, that the email server automatically converted an attachment to a DAT file, for one reason or another.

How To Encrypt a USB Flash Drive

Memory sticks are one of the great inventions of the IT area, due to their main advantage – portability. It allows the owner to carry information from one place to another or have it on him or her at any time. Their storage capacity increased permanently once the technological breakthroughs took place and one could now store tens of gigabytes on them. However, the downside of this great thing, the portability, is the fact that, in case one lost such a memory stick, the information stored on it would become easily available for anybody else that finds that stick. It’s true, that not all the information is private and confidential, but should this be the case, the situation could become very complicated.

In order to avoid such happenings, it proves itself to be very useful to encrypt the flash drives, using different methods. For example, if you own a Windows 7 Premium or Ultimate licensed operating system, you can use the encryption built in functions to do that. Otherwise, there is other software available for getting from the internet that runs on older Windows versions or other operating systems, as well.

We mentioned about the Windows 7 features to encrypt flash drives content. This is called Bit-locker To Go. It’s very easy to use this Windows function to encrypt all the contents and set a pass code without which nothing on the stick can be viewed or accessed. The disadvantage of using Bit-locker To Go is that this makes the memory stick with the encrypted contents unavailable for machines with other operating systems than Windows, while the older versions of Windows than Windows 7 can only read, but not modify contents (read-only feature).

Other software that can be used for encryption are True Crypt and Remora USB Disk Guard, which come with no-install version or installation directly on the memory stick.