Solved Windows 8 refuses to mount .iso image because image is 'sparse'

[MarkR]

Just thought I would share the solution I found to my problem mounting .iso images in Windows 8 Pro.

The very helpful error message I was getting was this:

and in powershell I got this:


Essentially the problem is that windows .iso mounting does not like 'sparse' files. I had used Acronis backup to backup my original .iso files and this DOES use sparse files. You can check if a file is 'sparsed' by looking at the files details in properties. The 'P' in the attributes represents a sparse file. See the screenshot below.

The result? When I restored my .iso images I could no longer mount them.

The simplest solution I have found is to just copy the .iso to a new file - this seems to create the new file without the sparse flag set.

Hope this helps somebody!

 

[Mystere]

For anyone that is curious.. Sparse files are files that have "reserved" space in them that is not technically part of the data. An application can create a sparse file so that it leaves room to expand it in the middle without having to recopy all the data. I can understand why Acronis would do this for a backup image.

Shouldn't Acronis also have a file viewer?

 

[medeiom]

cannot mount iso

Has anyone found a solution to this issue within Win8.1? I am receiving the same error msg. I tried associating the .iso extension but it does not exist.

Any help appreciated.

 

[AlexBushev]

May I suggest a new solution. Here is a piece of code and application which may solve the problem. It sets the sparse flag to 0 (zero). This thing worked for me perfectly.


https://github.com/AlexanderB1290/UnSparseISO