A self mounting image is a
disk image
A disk image, in computing, is a computer file containing the contents and structure of a disk volume or of an entire data storage device, such as a hard disk drive, tape drive, floppy disk, optical disc, or USB flash drive. A disk image is us ...
format, commonly found on the
classic Mac OS platform, that is encapsulated in an
application that mounts it as a
file system. When downloaded from the Internet, they are often in a
BIN,
BinHex
BinHex, originally short for "binary-to-hexadecimal", is a binary-to-text encoding system that was used on the classic Mac OS for sending binary files through e-mail. Originally a hexadecimal encoding, subsequent versions of BinHex are more simil ...
or
StuffIt file. Despite being an application, they often have a
file extension
A filename extension, file name extension or file extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file (e.g., .txt, .docx, .md). The extension indicates a characteristic of the file contents or its intended use. A filename extension is typically d ...
.
Disk Copy
Disk Copy was the default utility for handling logical volume images in System 7 (Macintosh), System 7 through Mac OS X 10.2 (usable in System Software 6 as well). In later versions of macOS it has been replaced by DiskImageMounter for mounting ...
, the application commonly used to handle disk images in the classic Mac OS was an optional program not part of the standard installation.
Self mounting images have fallen out of favor with the arrival of
Mac OS X
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...
. All copies of Mac OS X have
DiskImageMounter, the utility for mounting disk images.
Macintosh-only software
Disk images
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