Well I've been grabbing the pieces for psx emulation. Currently I am converting .rar into ISO. I know my pc is slow... but damn, this is taking forever. I'm using winrar of course, but is there some other way to do this? I downloaded a game, the first disk rather, and it was separated into 3 types of files. CCD ECM & SUB. Doing alittle research, I saw that you just convert it into ISO from WINRAR. I found the option for conversion, and am currently doing so.

I'm pretty confident this is the route to take, but is there any other things I might consider? I am new to ISO's for the most part. I have only used a few. And when I found them, they were already ISO format. I have Daemon v4.1, I believe it is a lite version. Considering I only used a basic mounter... is there anything this noob might consider?

ARRRGH!!! I waited 20 min. It said complete. WHERE THE HELL IS IT!!! It's not here... it's not there... Why does this have to be such a pain in the ass?!!!!

Hands on... it's the only way to learn.

I notticed that in the options, it had a selection for folder to send the converted files to. Well I selected it this time... and trying again... but my question remains... where the hell did my original ISO conversion go? Is there a default place things of this nature go? I remember long ago I found a folder that contained a copy of everything I ever extracted. Is there a folder like that? A default folder where one might find files that had no particular destination or lost files... and maybe 30 years of socks?

If so I want to know... as I don't want wasted disk space... as I only have 2 -40 GB HDD's. Already down to 10.5 on my main... gotta do some cleaning... and miscellaneous files need to be trashed.

So... anyone have some insight?

Well this whole thread is going to be me popping a blood vessel. I guess I'll archive all my mistakes so someone in my situation in the future... may learn from them.

Winrar/ Tools/ Convert Archives/

Now to the right, it says archive types. rar(1) is selected, and shows my game. Twice have I chose this and also ISO. I thought it would well... convert. NO!!! (YEA YEA now looking at this... I am a moron) When I uncheck rar(1) the game disappears from the left selection window. So I am to understand that this selects the file type to be converted only... which means that this conversion option only converts... TO .RAR!!!!

WTF!!!!

I never considered that it only converted to .RAR... that and... the instruction I read said to simply do this... either he was wrong... or on top of being ignorant... I'm stupid too... LOL

OK. I am reading lots and lots of bullsh!t. I cannot find the answer, as I must not know how to ask the proper question...

So just in case I cannot find the answer anytime soon... I'll state where I am at here... in case someone happens upon this thread quicker than I can find the info.

DL a game last night. (1st disk). It is in .rar format. When I open it... it is not an ISO, it's 3 seperate files. CCD ECM and SUB. Trying to find out how to make these into an ISO.

Sounds easy enough to find an answer... but all I find is lose ends and commands for linux. Apparently I am not asking the right questions.

Back to the endless searching until I actually know what the hell I am looking at...

Don't go popping blood vessels, please.

Use Explorer and do a search of your hard drive if you think you lost something.
It might even be in the Recycle bin.

Nono... turns out I was converting .rar into .rar..... At least thats what I think I did lol. There was no selections for what you want to convert to. Therefore I believe that it only converts into .rar.

When I chose to convert the .rar, I chose the folder the unzipped .rar was in. When it was done... there was a .rar in the folder too. Thats when it hit me. The realization that I have no idea what the hell I am doing.

Upon further searching... it appears that I am out of luck. Apparently I should just search again and hopefully find an actual ISO. But this doesn't make sense...

I am missing something basic. Tack it up to noobism. At this rate... I'll never get this game going...

Looks as if I need a different mounter. Wish I could just find an ISO... I really don't want to download 1,000,000 programs. If only I could convert these into an ISO...

Can't help you, because I've never had the bandwidth to download an ISO, so never bothered working out how to use one.

Also means, of course, I've never used any emulator that plays CDs.

Well thanks anyway Robert. Turns out... I was chasing the wrong tail. Upon further examination I noticed the ecm file was actually an img.ecm. Furthermore, It was either corrupt, or my Daemon cannot mount it for whatever reason. I have found what I was looking for... and lay this converting business to rest.

You need to unpack the ECM, as it's a compressed format of sorts. Then you get the "proper" disc image file. Then you can mount it just fine.

Why do you want to convert it to ISO anyway? For burning?

PROTIP: Google for 'unecm'.

What game is it??

Ahhhh I saw "unecm" but they were vague on what the hell it was... on top of that... once I got to this info... I already found another copy. The reason I wanted to convert into ISO... heh... was that it didn't mount, and I thought that my Daemon could only mount ISO's. Laugh all you want guys... how the hell was I supposed to know any different... So the new .img mounted fine.


Star Ocean :Second Story... I havent played that game... in a very very long time.


I did extract it... like Agozer said... I needed to unecm the .img to actually play it.. its like a secondary compression of sorts. I didn't know this when I posted all this... I thought I had to convert... but... I was verrrrrry wrong and ate up an entire evening learning the hard way.

You should always mount either CCDs or CUEs instead of the actual image files (unless we're talking about the plain ISO format) since some games contain more than one track of audio and/or data, so just mounting an image file only nets you the data on the first track.

CUE and CCD files are information files and complement the actual disc image, telling what kind of a data structure the disc has and how it should be dealt with.

I get those kind of files too(CCD, SUBS,and CUES. I use Alcohol 120

you can try Power ISO program:
http://www.poweriso.com/

with it, you can dealt with most of the formats of CD/DVD image