Direct Access Archive
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| Direct Access Archive | |
|---|---|
| File name extension | .daa |
| Developed by | PowerISO Computing, Inc. |
| Type of format | Disk image |
Direct Access Archive, or DAA, is a proprietary file format developed by PowerISO Computing for disk image files. It is similar to other disk image formats, such as ISO and BIN, but usable only by PowerISO software. The format supports features such as compression, password protection, and splitting to multiple volumes. Popular disk image mounting programs such as Alcohol 120% and Daemon Tools currently do not support the mounting of DAA images.
Currently there is no information about the format available in order to program third party implementation to read or write DAA format. Among mainstream applications, it can only be opened or converted with PowerISO (Windows and Linux only; the Linux version can only extract or convert it to ISO). Binary-only applications for Windows, Linux x86 & Mac OS X (limited version) are available from PowerISO. AcetoneISO is a free software available on Linux which can convert .daa files to ISO and then view them.
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[edit] Converting into a Standard Format
PowerISO provides a free utility for Linux and Mac OS X which allows you to extract DAA files or convert them into ISO format. The PowerISO Windows trial version only supports converting images from DAA files up to 300MB[1], less than half of the capacity of a standard CD.
Recently, a command line application has been developed to convert DAA files to ISO files called daa2iso. The program comes with a Windows binary and source code which compiles under Unix-like operating systems when linked to the zlib compression library. A brief tutorial for using the program appeared on Usenet recently, and is available here.
There is a .DAA to .ISO converter for MacOS X available under the GNU license at http://www.twilightedge.com/mac/daaconverter/
Graphical versions of daa2iso have also been made available for Windows and Mac OS X (see external links below).
[edit] Features
- Allows for compression saving space and making it easier to download
- Can be password protected
- Can be split into multiple smaller files
[edit] Disadvantages
- Proprietary format, currently with almost no 3rd-party support.
- Slow decompression/extraction process
[edit] External links
- PowerISO trial download
- PowerISO utility for Linux
- daa2iso command line application for Windows (source code included, and may be compiled for *nix without modification)
- daa2iso graphical interface for Windows (requires the above command line application)
- DAA Converter for Mac OS X, graphical Mac interface for daa2iso
