How to open .bin files in Mac?

I have a .bin image file with me that I want to mount on my Mac. How can I do it?

Rajashekharan Nair

Posted 2010-05-24T12:45:15.850

Reputation: 11

If 'image' means a photograph, rename it to reflect it's internal format, e.g. '.jpg'. Otherwise, what kind of binary image is it and what are you trying to do with it? Does it contain a file system that you're trying to mount and access? Or are you just trying to view the contents of some other kind of binary file? 'less' will (sort of) display binary files. 'strings' will display ASCII strings in a binary file. There are hex editors that will let you examine and modify a file. I think we need more information to help you better. – JRobert – 2010-05-24T13:31:10.807

3By the way, when written in all caps, "MAC" is taken to mean an abbreviation for a technology like and Ethernet Media Access Controller, or a cryptographic Message Authentication Check. If you were trying to abbreviate "Macintosh", only capitalize the first letter: "Mac". – Spiff – 2010-05-24T14:43:11.620

Given the word "mount" you're using, I doubt it's simply an executable script or program that you could run using Terminal? Otherwise something like chmod u+x myfile.bin followed by ./myfile.bin might be all you're looking for. But before trying that, maybe tell us where you got the file and what it is that you expect? – Arjan – 2010-05-24T14:51:01.730

Answers

".bin on a Mac" sounds like MacBinary.

I believe Stuffit Expander can extract these for you.

Ken

Posted 2010-05-24T12:45:15.850

Reputation: 121

Is this the .bin half of a "bin/cue" pair, meaning it's part of a CD-ROM, VCD, or DVD-ROM image? If you search for things like "bin/cue Mac", you'll find instructions for converting them and/or mounting them. Apparently a lot of people like to use Roxio Toast for this, although it can also be done with the open-source "BinChunker" (bchunk) tool. Some have had success just renaming the .bin to .iso. Apparently the main difference between a bin/cue disk image .bin file and a .iso file is that the .bin still has the per-sector parity/redundancy/checksum information that the original optical disc format would've used, but typically .iso's don't have all that extra data. Apparently some .iso handlers are able to ignore that.

Spiff

Posted 2010-05-24T12:45:15.850

Reputation: 84 656

I can't open it with Stuffit Expander. Use Zipeg, it works.

Robert A Henru

Posted 2010-05-24T12:45:15.850

Reputation: 133