Talk:Direct Access Archive

Is this a real format?
I can't find a formal specification for this file format anywhere, including the poweriso website. Is this a real format or just some proprietary file format used by some rarely used application? I can't even verify the "feature set" described in the writeup. --BWD(talk) 18:23, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

This IS proprietary compression and as such, no standard exists for it. If anyone has a solution from the open source community as to how to break this company's monopoly over disc imaging and compression, which is beoming commonplace on the Torrents, then you have full encouragement from me! 80.195.170.69 18:54, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, this is a proprietary and undocumented storage file format indeed. Very little is known on it, apart from its featureset. It seems to be using solid archival for its compressed scheme, even when creating an uncompressed image. Solid state is uncommon with image archives, so instead of renaming compressed DAA to a uncompressable image format, it'd make sense to rename it to another disk image extension (that can handle compression). It might be mountable then, but havent tried so. --Omega Said 18:13, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

It is very popular in the warez scene and on p2p networks. It's nearly a defacto standard on new release. There is a PowerISO DAA to MagicISO UIF convertor on btjunkie here (original piratebay upload here, but it has a copy of magiciso and poweriso included, possibly pirated, but it has .reg files that work. Family Guy Guy (talk) 06:21, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Not sure but..
I think (but I'm not certain...) that you can rename a .daa file to .iso and it will load in Alcohol 120%. I'm sure I've done this in the past, but can someone confirm that it works/doesn't work. Thanks Martinp23  19:11, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Renaming a .daa to .iso did NOT work for me. I tried to open it in Nero and WinRAR. Fsamuels 20:55, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
 * And it *cannot* work if compression was used in .daa. It won't work. Don't do it.
 * FYI, you can create and edit files smaller than 300 mb, with the trial version of PowerISO. You can export and burn files of any size.  Family Guy Guy (talk) 21:41, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Article on PowerISO?
Can we get an article on PowerISO, please? Geoffrey C Vargo 06:58, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Done, its quite simple at the moment though so I will need some help. --Lethal ImpuLse 16:17, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

.daa on linux
PowerISO have added an utility that lets you convert .daa to .iso for linux —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.151.219.200 (talk) 13:08, 27 February 2007 (UTC).

What program do I use to convert .daa to .iso on Linux? (that is Linux I said, not windows). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.175.39.179 (talk) 16:40, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

"daa2iso.zip" contains the source code "daa2iso.c". To compile that on FreeBSD, type "cc -o daa2iso daa2iso.c -lz" (you need to link to the zlib compression library). The resulting binary "daa2iso" creates an ISO file from a DAA file just fine. Compiling that on Linux should be similar. -- Cordula&#39;s Web (talk) 18:35, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Biased in favour of DAA format?
There is a section about the advantages of the DAA format. However, there are many disadvantages of this format as well, which are nowhere near as prominent in the article. Perhaps we should create a disadvantages section as well, or, better still, remove advantage/disadvantage sections. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.44.82.1 (talk) 14:20, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

7zip
An anonymous contributor added 7zip as a supporting program for DAA. I have found no evidence of that so removed it. --Voidvector (talk) 21:30, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
 * You need to convert .daa to .iso first (e.g. with daa2iso) and then use 7zip to extract files from the .iso. -- Cordula&#39;s Web (talk) 18:39, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Minor Edit
I Removed "Advanced" password protection + compression does not constitute it being "advanced" Picer (talk) 16:40, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Merger
I support the merger. --Voidvector (talk) 06:47, 18 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I oppose the merger as there is more than one program that uses the .daa file extension. --Vlsi0n (talk) 07:45, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Oppose, the article has too much information to merge into PowerISO CheesePlease NL (talk) 12:32, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

File Structure
I added a section about the file structure, which is a zip compressed ISO image. The text file in Luigi Auriemma's daa2iso explains this and is used as a reference. The GPL licensed sources can also be used to verify this. If the reference should be formatted in some other way, please correct it.Otus (talk) 12:01, 14 August 2008 (UTC)


 * After studying the code, it looks like the file consists of a header, followed by a length table, followed by compressed chunks of data. Each is compressed individually, which provides a way to do random access. The tool supports zlib/inflate and lzma decompression. A password protection feature is indicated as well, seems to be a custom algorithm. Theultramage (talk) 09:16, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Bias?
"The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject."

Could someone point it out to me? Could this be outdated? 71.178.239.150 (talk) 04:39, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Windows GUI and new format
removed the links to an old third party Windows GUI because daa2iso on Windows has its own GUI

a recent version of the DAA format has substituited zlib with LZMA and has reduced the size of some 32 bit fields, this info could be added in the File Structure section —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.0.141.77 (talk) 19:17, 23 August 2008 (UTC)