# creating a backup .iso file

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-backup-iso-file/433810>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 17, 2008, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-backup-iso-file/433810 "2008-01-17T00:16:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![KlondikeGeoff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3e96dc/32.png) [@KlondikeGeoff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KlondikeGeoff)\
**Post date:** [January 17, 2008, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-backup-iso-file/433810/1 "2008-01-17T00:16:12Z")

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I’ve been using Retrospect for backups for several years. They have a feature whereby after a backup, one can create a Disaster Recovery CD in case of a total crash. This becomes a bootable CD.

To create it, you make an .iso file of the backup, then burn it to a CD. The size of these files has always been around 600 MB, which fits on a CD-R or CD-RW disk.

Today I showed a friend how to use Retrospect for backups, and when tried to burn the disk, it told me it did not have enough room. So, took a look at the .iso file, and lo and behold, it was a humungeous 1,000,008,954. No wonder it would not fit on the disk.

His computer is using XP Home and nothing else is much different than my computers. I tried it on his laptop and it worked OK, but a second try on the desktop resulted in the same 1 gig .iso file.

Anybody know why this is or what’s going on here?

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**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\
**Post date:** [January 17, 2008, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-backup-iso-file/433810/2 "2008-01-17T00:18:59Z")

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Maybe there is some option in the program (new version?) to burn to DVD instead of CD.