Create ISO File

Create an ISO file online: build an ISO 9660 disc image (with Joliet and Rock Ridge names) from your files and folders. Free, private, no upload.

Files are processed in your browser and never uploaded.

How to create an ISO file

  1. Select files with Choose files or drag them onto the drop zone. Use Add a folder, or drop a folder, to copy a whole directory structure into the image.
  2. Enter an Archive name. The default archive becomes archive.iso.
  3. Click Create ISO.
  4. Download the image with its Download button.

The image is built by libarchive running as WebAssembly in your browser, without any upload or installed software.

ISO 9660, Joliet and Rock Ridge

An ISO file is a disc image: a file system laid out exactly as it would be on a CD or DVD. The underlying standard, ISO 9660, dates from the 1980s and on its own allows only short, upper-case file names. To make modern file names work, the images created here include two widely supported extensions:

  • Joliet stores Unicode names, which Windows uses to display long and non-English file names correctly.
  • Rock Ridge adds POSIX-style long names that Linux and other Unix-like systems read.

With both present, the same image shows proper file names whether it is mounted on Windows, macOS or Linux. Note that ISO images are not compressed; the file is roughly the total size of its contents.

What you can and cannot do with the result

Typical uses for a homemade ISO are burning a data CD or DVD, attaching files to a virtual machine as a virtual disc drive, or handing over a folder that should open read-only. On Windows 10 and 11, double-click the image or right-click it and choose Mount; on macOS, double-clicking mounts it in Finder; on Linux, sudo mount -o loop archive.iso /mnt or the file manager mounts it.

Be aware of these limits:

  • Not bootable. The image contains no boot record, so it cannot be used to start a computer or install an operating system.
  • No modification dates. Files inside the image do not keep their original dates and show 1970 or no date when opened. Use a TAR format if dates matter.
  • Empty folders are not stored, and duplicate paths get " (2)" appended.
  • The image is built in memory: totals above about 700 MB are slow and anything over 2 GB is refused, so a full DVD-sized image may be too large.

For comparison, on the command line Linux users typically run genisoimage -J -R -o archive.iso folder/ (or the same options with mkisofs), and macOS offers hdiutil makehybrid -iso -joliet -o archive.iso folder. Windows has no built-in ISO creator.

Tips

  • To read files back out of an ISO without mounting it, use Extract ISO.
  • Turning an existing ZIP into a disc image? ZIP to ISO does it in one step.
  • If you only need to bundle files for sending, a compressed ZIP is smaller and opens everywhere.

Frequently asked questions

Can I make a bootable USB or Windows installer with this?

No. The images created here are data-only ISO 9660 images without a boot record.

Will long file names work on Windows?

Yes. The Joliet extension stores the full Unicode names that Windows displays, and Rock Ridge does the same for Linux.

Why is the ISO bigger than a ZIP of the same files?

ISO is a file system image, not a compressed archive, so files are stored at their full size.

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