Folder2Iso turns folder trees into ISOs

ISO images are a popular way to distribute software, and Windows has become much better at handling them in recent years. Windows 7 added the ability to burn ISO images to disc, for instance, while Windows 8 is able to mount them as virtual drives.

Creating ISO images in the first place remains a little more challenging, of course, but if that’s something you need to do (even only occasionally) then there are some very simple solutions around. And few are quite as straightforward as Folder2Iso.

The program is an ultra-compact 1.45MB download, for instance. And portable, so unzip the single executable file (no adware, DLLs or other extras here) and it’s ready to go immediately.

The process of creating an image is extremely simple, too, and works more or less exactly as you’d expect. So you’ll choose the root folder which you’d like to be converted, select the output name and location of your finished image, and that’s just about it.

There are a couple of “extras” – you can give the image a name, and choose an appropriate character set, but otherwise it’s just a matter of clicking “Generate ISO” -- and waiting a moment for the ISO file to be created.

One small annoyance here is that the program displays the size of your folder (and any subfolders) in bytes, without any formatting. That can make for lengthy numbers in some situations, not easy to read at a glance, and presenting the combined file size in MB or GB might be clearer.

And it would also be useful if users had the option to exclude subfolders from the finished image.

Otherwise, though, if you ever need to create ISO images than Folder2Iso is a quick, easy and convenient way to get the job done.

Photo Credit: Liv friis-larsen/Shutterstock