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Where can one find some resource on the subject of comparison of (seemingly infinite) number of disc image formats ?

What is the difference between them, and why, oh why is there so many of them ? It seems that every program for handling them introduces a new one.

Is there any practical difference at all, save of everyone having a different name ?

edit: I do not mean image/picture/photo formats, but image formats like: ISO, DAA, BIN, CUE, MDF, MDS, BWI, LCD, IMG, CDI, CIF, ... the list goes on, and goes, and goes and ... zzzzz ... asleep

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Wiki to the rescue :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_disk_imaging_software

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Unfortunatelly, it doesn't tell anything about the question. I'm interested whether there is a reason for using one particular format over another, and in which situations (is there a diff. in size/compression/... whatever). – ldigas Feb 27 '10 at 1:43
@ldigas - did you follow up the links to each file type and the respective programs? – Molly7244 Feb 27 '10 at 2:01
Only the first few (after I posted the above ... Ja, ok, I gather this is the best i'm gonna get on that subject. – ldigas Feb 27 '10 at 11:46
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Why do we have so many different image formats? .jpg, .gif, .tif, .bmp, .png, and many more besides! Because they're all built for different hings - same with disk formats. (Indeed, programs introducing proprietry image formats was quite popular a while back, iirc. Most imaging programs will deal in the common formats)

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Not really. There is a distinct difference (or maybe I'm just more familiar with that field) between image formats. I can't say I've ever been recommended one disc image format over another, though. – ldigas Feb 27 '10 at 1:42
No, no, that's what I meant. Image formats are vastly different, and I know enough about disk formats to know they're different - just not how. – Phoshi Feb 27 '10 at 2:59
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Simply put - the reason there are so many disk image formats is because, nearly everyone who writes a disk image (management, burning / writing, ripping or other) utility think that they can do a better job.

IMHO, you can't go wrong with bog standard .iso, nearly every application and operating system on the market (free or pay) supports it - in addition to whatever other propriety filetypes they support.

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"disc" with a C, meaning optical media like CD and DVD? For that, ISO is the primary one, but it only supports a single track. That's fine for data discs, but not for audio CDs, or hybrids. So the other formats were cooked up, sometimes simultaneously, to support other features. These newer formats may be kept proprietary, at least initially, so there are several floating around, all slightly different.

"disk" with a K, disks in general, have to support all the different file systems, like FAT, EXT, HFS, NTFS, whatever. Instead of a straight sector-for-sector image, which would store all the unused sectors, you really only want to store the file data (and metadata) and for each file system, there are more optimal ways to do that. Then throw in features like encryption, backward compatibility, cross-compatibility, and you've got the soup that we have now.

That's the "why" part of your question.

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