Easily Mount an ISO in Mac OS X
Command Line, How to, Mac OS X, Tips & Tricks - April 22nd, 2008 - 42 Comments
If you’re wondering how to mount an ISO image in Mac OS X, it is very easy. For most ISO images you can mount them simply by double-clicking the ISO image file, and it will go through the auto-mounter app within OS X putting it on your desktop.
If for whatever reason that doesn’t work there are other methods to mount ISO’s within Mac OS X, and we’ll cover ways to do this with the built-in Disk Utility and a more advanced option of using the command line.
Mount ISO on Mac with Disk Utility
You can mount ISO images in Mac OS X by using Disk Utility, located in the /Applications/Utilities/ directory. After you have launched Disk Utility, navigate from the Disk Utility menu down to “Open Image File” and select your ISO file. The ISO should now appear mounted on the Mac OS desktop. Yes, this works for other disk image files too (dmg, img, etc).
Mount ISO with Mac OS X command line
In the Terminal type the following command: hdiutil mount sample.iso with sample.iso being the path to the image you want to mount. After the checksum is completet, your ISO will appear mounted on your Mac OS X desktop – that’s it. You you can actually mount virtually any other disk image type with hdiutil as well, so give .dmg .img a try too.
easy enough, is it really any harder than that in the desktop gui view?
@ James: This is a whole lot easier than trying to use the GUI when you’re logged in remotely via SSH.
I tried it with an .img file and it doesn’t really work…
It worked.. but now what? the image is mounted but when i click on it it just does the same thing… which is nothing lol.. please help
Dude, read the title.
“Easily mount an” – and then comes the important part – “ISO” – got it? .. “in Mac OS X”.
Okay, *sigh* I will explain…
I.S.O
ISO.
ISO is _not_ an IMG.
got it?
———————
Comment from @ngel
Time: January 23, 2009, 4:39 pm
I tried it with an .img file and it doesn’t really work…
@Beforez
Maybe you should read the whole post before making impolite and condescending comments.
I can’t get my .iso to mount… Can I get some assitance? The iso’s on the desktop, but it’s not mounting correctly for some reason.
Mounting an ISO of Ubuntu 8.10 fails on my 10.5.6 Mac.
Toast 10 mounted the ISO fine for me, though.
If your iso is on the desktop, simply type ”Cd desktop” in terminal before typing ”hdiutil mount sample.iso”
Hi. I’m trying to mount a wii iso file and even though I follow the above instructions, it simply doesn’t work. It says the iso file cannot be mounted (or something to that effect). Any ideas? I can’t burn it if I cannot mount it properly.
@ Kesr: good point, but as unix commands are case sensitive, make sure to type “cd Desktop”
or better yet, cd ~/Desktop
I used Toast 9
Select “Convert” tab, then “Image File”, then “Mount”
Worked great.
what does it mean by ‘…the path to the image you want to mount’? I dont know what to type. please help.
I just tried this as well, but got the error:
hdiutil: attach: extra image argument “Fantasy” – “Final” already specified
Usage: hdiutil attach [options]
hdiutil attach -help
any suggestions??
who can help me to know location this ISO expect torent host
I got the same thing, Matt. Any suggestions, anyone?
can one boot mac software .iso image dvd on a mac or does it have to be .toast image extension?
matt, and lucky i think the problem is that your not actually mounting an iso. your most likely trying to mount an .rar, etc. so make sure you DL a program like UnRarX and extract the .rar file then mount the .iso file that pops up.
@matt and lucky, mabye there are spaces in the name of your .iso? if so, you have to do something extra to make the shell delivering the name to the program as a single, unitary item – you need to quote or escape the name.
for example, use quotes around the name:
hdiutil mount “Final Fantasy XVLII – Yet More.iso”
alternately, you can also use backslashes to “escape” the spaces:
hdiutil mount Final\ Fantasy\ XCVI\ -\ The Epoch.iso
avoiding this delicacy in expressing special characters is one way a gui can make things easier – but sometimes, at the loss of flexibility.
(shucks – missed a backslash there…)
Great tip … I waisted hours in trying to import home videos from mini DVDs to iMovie. Tried several dvd rippers on a PC (because of MACs slotin dvd drive), several formats …. but wasn’t satisfied.
Mounting iso image of dvds is recognized as a camera by iMovie and import went flawlessly.
Thanks again.
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Ok, so I hate to be a newb and post a newb question, I am a very new mac user (in fact got it yesterday), and thus far love it, however I used to mount dvd iso’s on my windows laptop and watch them using powerdvd (to save on the battery). What I am trying to figure out is the exact command string that needs to be entered in Terminal for an iso that is located on the desktop. I tried just opening terminal and entering the details as per the example at the top of the page but it could not find the file (i’m assuming that the example assumes that the iso is in a root directory). In windows it was pretty simple c:/folder/file.iso if anyone can point me in the right direction that would be great. Cheers
@Newb , you can usually just mount an iso by double clicking on it which will mount it through Disk Utility. If you want to use the command line though just type
hdiutil mount ~/Desktop/imagefile.iso
~ is your home directory, and /Desktop/ is the literal desktop. Alternatively, you can just type hdiutil mount and then drag the file itself into the terminal and the path to it will appear after ‘hdiutil mount’ which works well if your file is in some obscure location
Fantastic, worked like a charm, appreciate it.
I successfully mounted the disk, but i still cannot open the application because it says there is no disk inserted. It is clearly mounted, though. Any suggestions?
Confused, it may just make you more confused, but if you open Teminal and enter man hdiutil you will get the manual page for hdiutil. It’s possible some of the optional tags for the command, like -verbose or -debug might give you a clue.
type the following command: hdiutil mount sample.iso with sample.iso being the path to the image you want to mount. After the checksum is completet, your ISO will appear mounted on your Mac OS X desktop – that’s it. You you can actually mount virtually any other disk image type with hdiutil as well, so give .dmg .img a try too.
i am trying to mount a series of .iso images that work fine on my XP machine. when i try to mount them through the terminal i get the following error:
hdiutil: mount failed – not recognized
i receive similar errrors when attempting to mount the image by double-clicking the icon from the desktop and attempting to open the image in disk utility.
any thoughts on what is going on here? the software on the disc is supposed to be Windows/Mac compatible and, as i mentioned, i have been running the program from images mounted on my XP machine for quite some time now.
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Thanks a lot!! I had a .iso I needed to restore with disk utility, but it wouldn’t recognize the .iso format. This little terminal trick worked like a charm! Awesome!!
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So I can mount the .iso but it won’t boot the movie. All it will let me do is open the folder which contains Video and Audio Folders. The same .iso will boot fine on my PC. But who wants to use a PC….
I successfully mounted using the advice here, but then apparently it wasn’t a normal mount…? Apparently it is also an avi. What do I do about that? Aren’t avi’s incompatible with macs?
GAHokay,
AVI’s are compatible with, but it’s likely that you need a special codec installed to open the video.
Check out our post on how to watch AVI video on your Mac, it should help.
- Manish
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Hi, I’m also quite new with Mac, and can’t solve a problem: I would like to create .iso or .dmg images from audio CD, which I cannot using the disk utility (somehow it doesn’t recognize). Then, if I convert it using my Windows into .iso, I cannot mount it — the reason is the same. I tried typing in the terminal as well, but the message is the same: Mount failed – not recognized. (No double click, no disk utility.) Any suggestions? It would be so important… Thanks.
Hey everyone…I’m trying to unrar a series of files using UnRarX…and in part 1 of the files, the second file is a .iso file giving me this error
Encrypted file: CRC failed in ISO.File.20/MOUNTME.iso (password incorrect ?)
Total errors: 1
I’m assuming this is because I have to mount the .iso?
you need a password to unlock the .rar file
look where you d/l’ed it
My Macbook has Mac OS X 10.6.4 with 4 gigs of RAM. When I used Terminal to mount my 4 gig iso, it said it didn’t mount. What could I be doing wrong.