How to open .daa Files?

Yet another bespoke file format that unsuccessfully attempts to futher the agenda of vendor lock-in: If you are running Windows, you need to purchase PowerISO from poweriso.com , if you are running X86-based Linux flavour, the same people offer a free program to read and write .daa files. Go figure...

.daa files are "Direct Access Archive" files and normally require paid-for software to open them. It is effectively an .iso file with some added bells and whistles, and it compresses the data. A .daa file typically compresses as well as its equivalent .iso file compressed with the BZ2 algorithm.

Solution

Install the poweriso program, which converts a .daa file to a .iso file. On Gentoo and its derivatives, it is done as follows:

# emerge poweriso

Or download the X86-based binary from poweriso.com and put it on your search path:

# wget http://poweriso.com/poweriso-1.3.tar.gz

# tar -xzvf poweriso-1.3.tar.gz

# copy poweriso /usr/local/bin/.

Then run the program against the offending file to get a usable .iso file.

# poweriso infile.daa -o outfile.iso -ot iso

PowerISO Copyright(C) 2004-2008 PowerISO Computing, Inc
Type poweriso -? for help

Converting from infile.daa to outfile.iso ... 100%

Mount the resulting .iso file in, say, the /mnt/image directory:

# mkdir /mnt/image

# mount -o loop -t iso9660 outfile.iso /mnt/image

Check the image's content:

# ls /mnt/image

Now that you know that your conversion process was successful and you have finished reading the files (.iso files are read-only file systems), remember un-mount the .iso image file:

# umount /mnt/image

Use any of a number of free Linux programs to burn the resulting .iso file to a CD or DVD. My favourite CD/DVD writing program? Why, K3B of course!

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How to open .daa Files?

Solution