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Very few programs are known to create “waves” on the Internet and also to become “famous” for a proprietary type of file they use to save the files they process. The Direct Access Archive (a file with the extension “.daa”) is the format invented by PowerISO Computing and it is aimed at creating (CD/DVD) disk image files that have compression features, password protection and the splitting into multiple volumes option.

The advanced users already have virtual drive software installed on their computers, but none of them supports the DAA format – instead, PowerISO offers the possibility to mount such files into the virtual drive that can be created through one module from the program itself. So, that makes it the only handler of DAA disc image files.

What makes this format unique is the ability to create a split image into multiple files, just like most of the archiving utilities offer the options to create split volumes of large archive files. From the screenshots below you can see that I have tested the program (under Windows Vista) and I also created an image of the very same disk I used to create other types of images too – in order to compare them – to see which type takes up less hard drive space. Apparently, the DAA format may be good because it offers the split volume method, but that’s as far as it goes – because when it comes to compression, the “champion” is still the UIF (universal image format) that I have spoken about in an earlier review of a similar piece of software.

The virtual drive module includes the possibility to create up to 8 virtual drives and has shell integration that allows you to mount images without having to start up the PowerISO program. The supported types of image files that can be loaded or edited into the program are DAA, ISO, BIN, CUE, NRG, IMG, MDF, MDS, BWI, B5I, GI, CDI, PDI, P01, PXI, NCD, C2D, CIF, LCD, FCD and VCD. It can save CD/DVD images only in the ISO, BIN and the DAA formats.

Applicability:
I would recommend this program to all administrators of computers from the offices of various companies as it supports a lot of formats and can create very good back-ups of original software CD/DVDs by creating images and then burning them onto blank CD/DVD media with the included burning module.

Pro(S): The support for a very big number of image formats is quite an advantage for this program as it can handle easily any of the image type mentioned above. Just in case you don’t have big storage media – you can save the image file into smaller parts and put them separately on multiple CD/DVDs.

Con(s): The DAA file format doesn’t bring a very appealing choice to the table as it doesn’t create a very big compression rate – so don’t expect to create a 10MB image file out of a 60MB one. Again, this type is not supported at the moment by other virtual CD/DVD software so you have to use only PowerISO for it. If only the price would be more convincing...

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