How can I convert series of rar/zip files to an image?

Question

Is there a way (apart from unzipping, and then making an image, manually, step by step) to convert a series of let's say, zip or rar files, to an image file (I'm not choosy as to the type) ?

By series of zip/rar files, I mean a series of archives, all of the same size (for example, 20 mb, as they were send by mail).

Answer 1

If we are talking about one archive in several files, then you will find information about regrouping them into one file only (or at least extract their content at once) at this other question (or this one, seems they are duplicates which should be merged).

To make an image file from the extracted content, you can use PowerISO, which works nicely for this purpose.

Answer 2

I would recommend using AutoUnpack

AutoUnpack is a freeware utility that can be used to automatically download, repair, and unpack all RAR-, 7z-, zip-, TS - archives, or splitted files (e.g. *.001). Which is especially useful for usenet binaries.

Normally people will start QuickPar while downloading (or afterwards) to verify whether the downloaded files are complete and to repair them if necessary. Then it is time to extract the downloaded files with WinRAR or 7-Zip . Finally they will delete the RAR and PAR files. So a couple of actions have to be performed by the user. AutoUnpack can automatically do this for us as follows:

• While downloading files from usenet, start AutoUnpack and tell it which folder it should monitor (your download folder).
• AutoUnpack analyzes this source folder to search for PAR2 files. It uses them to verify the downloaded files that belong to them. If some files are incomplete or missing and there aren't enough PAR2 repair blocks available, the program will show how many blocks are missing. It will analyze the folder again later (10 minutes for example).
• If enough PAR2 repair blocks are available AutoUnpack will repair the missing or incomplete files (if necessary).
• AutoUnpack will verify whether the repair was successful. If so, it will unpack the archive to extract the files.
• Finally AutoUnpack can remove the RAR and PAR files after extraction.