UIF Files
UIF Files are compressed disk images comparable to the ISO or IMG format with the difference that the contents are compressed to save disk space. UIF stands for Universal Image Format and UIF files usually are images of CDs or DVDs that have been created with the UIF file creation tool MagicISO. UIF files have several additional benefits in comparison to other image formats including disk encryption and password protection.
MagicIso is a commercial tool which is offered as a trial version. Users could theoretically use it to burn the UIF file image to CD or DVD. Another option to deal with the UIF file format is to install the free MagicDisc tool that can mount those images just fine so that the user can install or copy contents from the disks to the computer. MagicDisc supports a wide variety of image formats including the popular bin and img but not the iso format.
The final and probably best solution for dealing with UIF files is to convert them into ISO format which all the CD burning software programs support. The easiest way to do this is to download the UIF converterUIF to ISO and unpack it on the computer.
The application is portable and the user can execute uif2iso.exe right away. The tool opens the browse computer dialog window and requests that the user picks in UIF file from the computer. A second window will pop up after picking the UIF file asking for the name of the ISO image that will be created from the selected UIF file.
Once the ISO image has been created it can be burned to disk or mounted. Linux users can compile the source code that comes with uif2iso to be able to convert the uif files to iso as well.
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These file formats are completely useless as they provide little or no file size difference due to the compression. What they actually are is a craptastic way for the author of MagicDisc to hock his useless app. That being said a lot of warez are being released in this format either by the author of this app or by foolish people.
There is also another application that is identical in usefullness and in marketing strategy called PowerISO. It’s useless proprietary file format is DAA.
The same guy who makes UID2ISO also makes DAA2ISO, you can get them form here : http://aluigi.org/
The link above leads to an Italian page that you have to drill down in to find uif2iso. Here’s the link to the English page with the download link: http://aluigi.org/mytoolz.htm#uif2iso
I share the above writers reservations re MagicISO, but the alternative, UIF2Iso is even worse. It’s command line [arg!] and, even worse, despite its claim, doesn’t allow specifying output directory. So it either doesn’t create an ISO, or hides it somewhere that XP’s Search is unable to find. Sigh.
marinus- uif to iso is made for mac
If you run it on a windows pc you might just as well run magiciso itself.