Bin is an image format, that is commonly used on the Internet. It is usually accompanied by a cue file of the same name that has instructions on how to burn or mount the image properly. Most CD and DVD burning programs support Bin and Cue files, and one valid option is to burn the file to CD or DVD to access the files. It is on the other hand not a straightforward solution. A free burning software is ImgBurn that supports those files.

Another possibility is to mount the bin file on the system, which basically emulates the CD burning. Free tools that can mount bin files are OSFMount, Virtual Clone Drive or WinCD Emu

If you just want to extract the bin file on your PC, you can use a free archiving software that supports the extraction. One of the programs that is capable of that is IZArc, which I first reviewed in 2007 here on Ghacks Technology News.

IZArc supports a wide variety of archiving and CD/DVD imaging formats, including the Bin format. The program adds context menu entries to the Windows Explorer right-click menu by default, which you can use to extract the Bin files after installation.

Just right-click the bin file in question and select IZArc > Extract Here to extract the file and folder structure to the current directory. You can alternatively open the Bin file in IZArc which is probably the better option if you just need a file from the image and not all files.

The original bin file will be left untouched if you opt to extract it to the computer. The same is true if you open it in the program, but be aware that the changes that you make there might alter the file permanently (for instance if you decide to delete a file).

Is there another method to extract Bin files that I have forgotten to mention? Let me know in the comments.

Once integrated users can right-click files and unpack them and create files as well using the main program interface. The user can choose between three options on how the progress is displayed for him. Two are graphical representations while one uses the command line. File checks can be performed as well displaying checksums / hash information of various algorithms which is great for verification purposes.

Peazip does have one problem though which makes it unusable for me. Peazip extracts selected archives at once. This means that if I select two archives they are unpacked at the same time which in turn means that the unpacking processes takes longer than in tools that unpack files after each other.

A quick benchmark with two rar archives had the result that PeaZip needed about twice as much time as IZarc to unpack those archives. Peazip was a little bit faster though when only one rar archive was unpacked.

What I really like about IZArc is that it opens really quickly and seems to unpack files at least as fast as WinRar. I did not benchmark anything here so this is just my opinion. IZArc offers all the usual features that archive programs offer these days such as shell integration, drag and drop support, self-extracting archives and multi-volume archives.

IZArc can also be downloaded as a mobile version called IZArc2Go and a command line add-on for the main program that supports batch processing is also available at the official website. I don’t think the users that already use 7-zip will make the switch because of their program offering basically the same features.

Update: IZArc has been in development for quite some time. After four years, it is still being actively developed. When you look at the program’s feature list you notice that it supports a wide variety of them. This includes common features like creating, deleting and adding archives, but also less common features like converting an archive into a different format, repairing broken archives or merging multi-volume sets.

IZArc supports a few dozen archive file types plus several CD and VD image formats, which makes the archiving software a versatile tool.

The program integrates well, even on 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. It integrates nicely into Windows Explorer so that it becomes possible to access the most common functions directly with a right-click and the selection of the right option from the context menu.