Free online 7Z to ISO converter

A virtual machine, installer, emulator, or disc-burning program may require an ISO image instead of a compressed 7Z download. If the archive already contains an ISO, extraction is sufficient; if it contains only disc files, those files must be packaged into a new ISO.

What 7Z and ISO files contain

7Z is a compressed archive format created by 7-Zip. It combines files into archive entries and compresses them with methods such as LZMA or LZMA2; AES-256 encryption and multipart archives are also supported. Disk-image downloads commonly use 7Z to reduce the size of an ISO or a directory tree copied from a disc. 7-Zip, PeaZip, Keka, and The Unarchiver can open 7Z archives, depending on the operating system.

ISO is a single-file image of an optical disc's filesystem and disc layout. Most ISO files use ISO 9660, UDF, or both. Operating systems can mount them as virtual discs, and virtual machines, installers, emulators, and disc-writing software commonly accept them. ISO normally provides little compression, so an ISO rebuilt from extracted files is usually larger than the original 7Z archive.

A 7Z archive is not normally mountable as an optical disc. It may contain an existing .iso, several files, or the complete contents of a disc. Extracting an existing ISO preserves that image; creating an ISO from ordinary files produces a new image and does not automatically reproduce the original disc.

Extract an ISO already in the archive

1. Install 7-Zip on Windows, or use a compatible archive utility on macOS or Linux.
2. Open the .7z file and look for files ending in .iso, such as installer.iso or disc1.iso.
3. Select the ISO and choose Extract. Extract it to a drive with enough free space for the uncompressed image.
4. Mount, burn, or open the extracted .iso with the program that requires it. Do not rename archive.7z to archive.iso; changing the extension does not change the format.

Using the 7-Zip command line, extract an archive with:

7z x archive.7z -oC:/Extracted

Test a possibly damaged archive before extraction with:

7z t archive.7z

For a multipart archive, place every part in the same directory and open the first part, commonly archive.7z.001. A password-protected archive requires its original password.

Create a new data ISO from disc files

Use this method only when the archive contains folders and files rather than an existing ISO. Extract everything into a dedicated directory, and make sure the files that belong at the disc root are directly inside that directory rather than inside an unintended extra parent folder.

On Windows, a graphical disc-image utility such as AnyBurn can create the image. Choose Create image file from files/folders, add the extracted disc contents, select ISO as the output format, set a volume label if required, and save the result as output.iso.

With xorriso, available for Linux, macOS, and Windows, run:

xorriso -as mkisofs -o output.iso -iso-level 3 -J -R /path/to/extracted

The -J option adds Joliet names for Windows compatibility, and -R adds Rock Ridge metadata commonly used on Unix systems. On macOS, hdiutil can create a basic hybrid ISO:

hdiutil makehybrid -o output.iso /path/to/extracted -iso -joliet

On Windows, Microsoft's oscdimg can create a basic image:

oscdimg -m -o -u2 extracted output.iso

You can also use the free converter on 101convert.com without installing software. Its result depends on how the service interprets the archive; it may extract files and build a data ISO rather than preserve an embedded ISO or original disc-image metadata. Avoid uploading confidential backups, private software, or material restricted by license.

Bootability and compatibility limits

Extracting an embedded ISO retains its boot catalog, boot image, filesystem settings, and other data byte-for-byte. Rebuilding an ISO from extracted files does not normally retain the original boot records, El Torito boot image, partition layout, volume metadata, file order, timestamps, permissions, or platform-specific attributes. Files named boot, EFI, or sources do not make a newly created ISO bootable.

For a bootable Windows, Linux, recovery, or game disc, use the original ISO whenever possible. If rebuilding is unavoidable, you need the original boot image and the correct boot-catalog options for xorriso, mkisofs, or oscdimg; those details cannot be reliably inferred from a directory tree alone.

ISO also does not reproduce every property of physical media. Copy protection, raw sectors, subchannel data, unusual partition maps, Unix permissions, and macOS metadata may be lost when files are extracted and repackaged. After extracting an existing ISO, verify its SHA-256 checksum against the publisher's value when available:

certutil -hashfile installer.iso SHA256

A newly rebuilt ISO will normally have a different checksum from the source disc image, but it should mount successfully and contain the expected files.