Structure of ISO file, storage of dir. meta info

[miamicanes]

Are the bytes in a .iso file LITERALLY the sequential cooked byte values you'd get from reading sector after sector in order, or do .iso files contain additional meta information or data structures beyond that? In particular, how are things like the layer break for a dual-layer ISO encoded within the file?

Going a step further... if a Joliet disc is burned with Nero, or a UDF disc is formatted by Windows and has files written to it... how is the directory meta information laid out? Is it basically a big multiple linked list that starts near the beginning, but points to further nodes scattered throughout the disc? Or does the bulk of the meta info get concentrated in one or two particular areas of the disc to expedite future access speed (at the expense of vulnerability to a scratch)?

[foxyshadis]

The most common .iso format (there are several, confusingly) is a simple cooked stream of bytes from beginning to end. Layer breaks aren't present and have to be computed by the burner; for those you need .bin, which is commonly (again, several formats) every byte exactly as written to the disk. Also, only the first track is present. There's absolutely no header, no metadata, no nothing, at the beginning or end.

All of the filesystem information is as printed on the disk. ISO-9660, Joliet, and UDF all have their own locations, as well as HFS and every other conceivable filesystem (I've heard people have put NTFS on a cd, bizarrely). Wikipedia has basic information on how to find and parse the filesystem blocks, and links to better documents.

[Shinigami-Sama]

All of the filesystem information is as printed on the disk. ISO-9660, Joliet, and UDF all have their own locations, as well as HFS and every other conceivable filesystem (I've heard people have put NTFS on a cd, bizarrely). Wikipedia has basic information on how to find and parse the filesystem blocks, and links to better documents.

the solaris DVDs have high serria and ufs on them as well