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Is getting an image of a disc (eg with brasero) the same thing as going into the cd, selecting everything and putting it into a .iso archive (eg with 7zip or ubuntu's archive manager)?

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No, it is not the same. For a disk that is only holding data, it probably won't make much of a difference, but some disk have things that would be copied incorrectly, or not at all by just a select all.

For example, if you selected and copied files into a new archive, you could not replicate a bootable CD like your operating system CD.

The ISO 9660 aka CDFS has lots of meta-data, that you may need in some cases.

CDs can have hard-links for example. I have a ISO that fits on a CD ~500MB, but if you tried to a simple copy to the filesystem, it would appear to have over 1.2GB worth of data on it

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In short, the answer is no. It will record additional information like where the files on the disc were, which would make things like copying a bootable disc more effective.

If you were to copy a bootable disc just by selecting everything on the disk, and then burned the resulting files, it would not work. Taking the image using a program that generates and ISO would do the job properly.

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It is not the same. If the CD ISO has special parameters (ie booting your computer) then just copying the the files from a CD to an ISO would not copy those special parameters.

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  • I'm kind of scratching my head as to why you would upvote an answer that directly contradicts yours...
    – soandos
    Dec 22, 2011 at 1:15
  • Read my comment. Up vote was ironically given for his sarcasm and my sarcasm for the up vote which contradicts my answer. It's a paradox.
    – kobaltz
    Dec 22, 2011 at 1:18
  • Got it. Was just confused.
    – soandos
    Dec 22, 2011 at 1:18
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Yes. It is the exact same thing. I don't know anything about "brasero" (or Ubuntu's archive manager or 7zip for that matter) , however .iso images are not compressed (a 700mb .iso fits perfectly onto a cd).

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  • Even for bootable discs??? I believe, (as the the other answers that arrived at basically the same time) that you are mistaken. (hence the -1)
    – soandos
    Dec 22, 2011 at 1:07
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    brasero is a cd-authoring tool, it will copy a cd using something like dd to make a bit-for-bit copy. I am pretty sure he is asking if he can select files in file-manager and copy them into some kind of archive tool. This is not the same at all.
    – Zoredache
    Dec 22, 2011 at 1:12
  • @kobaltz Thanks!, I'll wind up deleting my answer though...
    – wizlog
    Dec 22, 2011 at 1:14
  • @Zoredache Thanks, Now I understand a bit better...
    – wizlog
    Dec 22, 2011 at 1:15

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