How to convert .iso to .img

Question

How to convert .iso to .img

i am being driven absolutely madd by my computer. all i want to do is a simple task, yet hours of my life have now been drained. so to save the rest of my time as well as others in the future, how does one convert a .iso file to .img on a mac? (yes, i've looked at every forums answers and ive copied the instructions (which were slightly different for each forum) perfectly into terminal, but nothing happens. so lets make this as simple as can be....
just in case this maters, i'm running osx mavericks.

on my desktop there is an iso file we will call X.iso.

i want X.iso to be converted to X.img.

simple right? or at least you’d think so….
if anyone can write out the formula that i can then type into terminal, you will achieve god like status in my mind.

the file is on my desktop, and i want the converted file to end up on my desktop as well. so because the file location is simple, and universal, the formula should be pretty easy to figure out.

thank you to whoever does.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)

Posted on Feb 9, 2014 6:19 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 16, 2014 9:30 PM in response to Cornsmith Jewels

i've finally found a solution; download unetbootin! it's a fantastic program that puts the iso onto a flash drive. now i have a readable drive from the iso file. i highly recommend this program to all.

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Answer 2

cjthayne

Level 1

4 points

Jul 13, 2017 6:03 PM in response to Allan Eckert

Sorry, old thread, but just had to comment. ^ Eckert, you are not a nice nor helpful person. And ignorant, to boot.

UNetbootin is sweet. Thanks OP

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Answer 3

Feb 9, 2014 9:00 PM in response to Allan Eckert

why are you being argumentative now? i can read very clearly that you don't think this can be done. your point has been made very clear... twice now. thank you for your input.

anyone else?

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Answer 4

Feb 9, 2014 6:29 PM in response to Cornsmith Jewels

.iso files are Windows files.

The Mac is not going to be able to do anything with them.

.img files are Mac files. To create one of them you complie code on a Mac will generate one.

Conversion between them is not possible.

What is in the .iso file anyway?

Allan

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Answer 5

Feb 9, 2014 6:49 PM in response to Allan Eckert

hi allan,
thanks for the super quick reply, but i don't think this is true. theres definitely a way of converting .iso to .img; theres many people out there who claim to have success with this through terminal. it doesn't matter what the file is called... like i said in the original post... for reasons of simplicity, we are going to call it X.iso; the name is irrelevant; it's the formula that gets typed into terminal that i need.

i don't mean to sound rude, but if you don't have an answer please just keep your comments to yourself. the last thing any forum needs is a bunch of "i don't know"'s. there is a way, and i want to hear the formula from someone who knows what he/she's doing.

a couple examples of this formula from other websites are as follows...

hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o /convert/newfile/output.img /convert/source.iso

or

Type "hdiutil convert source.iso -format UDRW -o destination.img" without quotes, and then press "Return." Replace "source" and "destination" with their actual values.

BUT...

none of them have worked for me. this being said, it's worked for others somehow. i must be typing something wrong. this is why i need a mac genius. any takers?

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Answer 6

stuuu68

Level 1

4 points

Jul 20, 2014 7:37 AM in response to Cornsmith Jewels

I've been chasing my tail around today also trying to create bootable USB drives from linux ISO images.

The ISO images I was using were ISO install images for debian and lubuntu for powerpc.

Macos does not like these images and will not happily mount, manipulate or convert them.

However, all the online advice says these need to be converted into DMG files first before writing to USB, but I have found this is not the case.

Just as on any other linux platform, I was able to use the ISO untouched.

Using dd to write the ISO to a USB device works for me as long as I write it to the _whole_ device and not just one partition.

ie

dd if=lubunu.iso of=/dev/disk3 bs=1m

NOT

of=/dev/disk3s2

I was trying the latter and trying to get the ISO onto a particular partition of a large USB stick.

The former method works just fine and creates the multiple partitions on the USB stick as necessary, same as it would for a CD.

I can then boot this USB stick (in my case) on a PPC old mac from open firmware with something like:

boot usb1/hub@1/disk@2:2,\\yaboot

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Answer 7

Feb 9, 2014 7:36 PM in response to Cornsmith Jewels

Well, if you know so much why did you even bother coming here?

I still stand by what I said that you can't convert Windows binaries to Mac binaries which is what you are asking for.

Allan

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Answer 8

leroydouglas

Level 10

201,590 points

Jul 20, 2014 9:29 AM in response to Cornsmith Jewels

Apple disk images usually have the .dmg file extension.

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