An "iso" file is just a disk image. •
There are two ways to deal with a disk image: put it on a disk, or make it
look like you put it on a disk.
The easiest way to think of an iso file is more like a "zip" or "cab" file,
only without the compression.
An iso file contains the image of a disk. That means it contains all the files
and folders that were on that disk, much like a zip or cab file contains a
collection of files and folders. The real difference is that an iso is a
byte-for-byte copy of the low-level data actually stored on a disk.
There's nothing about the iso format that actually knows about files,
folders or formats. It's just the raw data from the disk. Now, naturally
that raw data, if interpreted correctly, may know about files, folders
and format. But, like a disk, the operating system has to look, see what format
was used (things like FAT32, NTFS and the like), and interpret the contents of
the iso file as if it were reading the raw data from an actual disk.
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