How to Mount ISO/MDF Images in Linux

Harddisk

The mount command in Linux is a very powerful command. It can be used to mount any thing from a Samba mount to a ISO image file. The ability of the mount command to read ISO files makes it very useful for me.

My brother has a habit of saving DVD films as a image file. I believe he uses Alcohol 120% to do this. If he wants to view the Film, he ‘mount’ this image using Daemon Tools. He uses windows to do this. After he is done, he hands me this image. I can mount this image without any special tools in Linux – I just need the mount command.

mount -t iso9660 -o loop <Image_File> <Mount_Point>

Mounting Example

mount -t iso9660 -o loop /home/binnyva/Films/300.iso /mnt/Image

The ‘-t’ option specifies the filetype – this is optional.

This command works with both ISO and MDF images.

25 comments

  1. Just mounting the .mdf image as a iso9660 image didn’t work for me. I’ve used mdf2iso to convert it first.

  2. after following above instruction i got this result ……plz help

    wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/loop0,
    missing codepage or helper program, or other error
    In some cases useful info is found in syslog – try
    dmesg | tail or so

  3. MDF can’t be mounted IMHO. And converting to iso doesn’t help either, because you actually can lose data in the convert process. MDF can store damaged sectors (used in some copy protections) and ISO doesn’t.

  4. I didn’t succeed to use mdf2iso to convert a 6.4GB mdf file…

    It kept complaining about a file too long (maybe a limit at 4GB), even with mdf2iso 0.3.1 (with large file support).

    It seems i succeed with using kiso to convert it…

    6.4GB iso file allocation is damn too long…

    Cheer up 😉

  5. I used mdf2iso successfully but I guess it may have lost the copyright protection sectors.

    “-t udf” didn’t work at all, and I don’t see why it would…

  6. Check out fuseiso, which allows mounting cd/dvd images that wouldn’t normally be mountable (mdf, nrg)

  7. This “mount -t iso9660 -o loop ” worked perfectly for me just fine, didn’t need to install any thing.

  8. Thanks for the tip. The mimetype is actually detected as an iso!!

    @themoon49,

    -t specifies the filesystem type, which in this case is iso9660. -o switch is for options which in this case is loop.

    try reading the manual page of mount command.

    # man mount

  9. Hi
    There is a nice utility called iat available:
    http://iat.berlios.de/
    (I suppose it’s also available in your distribution repository)
    It is able to automatically detect many formats and convert them to iso, just use:
    iat –iso -i some_strange_file.xxx -o new_file.iso
    It works very well.

  10. I had problem with my mdf,neither -t iso9660 or mdf2iso worked for me,

    but iat worked like a charm

    thanks for the tip Mateusz

  11. This will not work for audio CD images. I was pulling my hair out over why none of the mdf -> iso converters would work on my files. Turns out the mdf file is different for audio CDs. The only thing I found that worked was this:
    http://www.sqweek.com/sqweek/index.php?p=5
    It’s the “MDF Audio Extractor” and apparently the 0.1 version was good enough, because it’s never been updated since. But it worked for my audio images!

    mdfextract 0.1 (c)2007 Bjorge Dijkstra

    usage: mdfextract [options] file.mds

    options:
    -i output mds info instead of extracting
    -r extract raw track data
    -s output to stdout instead of file
    -t extract single track (num > 0)
    -q quiet, no output

  12. thank you for what you have done. i am running debian jessie. i used mdf2iso to convert the cd image. i mounted it somewhere. i installed flash? then i did the main installation and i was impressed. i was looking for tombraider 3 but never mind tombraider 2 in all new to me. i paid for tr3 and the cd exploded in my cd drive. i paid to download a copy but now that has expired. i love this game it is so addictive and silly.

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