“iat” is a versatile, command-line based tool that lets you convert a lot of different types of disc images into the ISO format. If your CD/DVD burning utility in GNU/Linux is having issues while burning a certain type of image (especially those “proprietary” ones such as “MDF” for instance), then this tool will come in handy.
It also has the ability to burn disc images directly (using “cdrecord”), so you don’t even have to convert them manually. But when I tried to burn a “NRG” disc image (created by Nero) it gave me an error though.
But I used “iat” to convert it (NRG) to ISO and then burned it without any issues using “Brasero” anyway :).
Few main features …
*. Only converts into the ISO-9660 format.
*. There are other tools that let you convert few proprietary disc image formats such as “NRG’ or “MDF” into the ISO format in Ubuntu for instance, however, usually those tools only support reading a single input format.
But ‘iat’ supports reading (input) NRG, MDF, PDI, CDI, BIN, CUE and B5I images.
*. Shows information such as a progress-bar, Block size, ECC sector (size), header sector (size) and few others (above screenshot).
You can install “iat” in Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin, 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the below command in your Terminal window.
sudo apt-get install iat
How to use it?
Pretty simple. Let’s say that I have an image called “Ubuntu-11.10.nrg” (I actually created one using Nero for testing ;-)) that I want to convert into the ISO format. Then I’ll use “iat” in the below format.
iat Ubuntu-11.10.nrg Ubuntu-11.10.iso
Make sure to replace “Ubuntu-11.10.nrg” with your source disc image file’s name (including its extension) and its path (location), and “Ubuntu-11.10.iso” with the output file’s name (it’ll be saved in the same directory). That should do it.
If you want, you can read its manual by using the below command.
man iat
That’s it.
