The Universal Image Format (UIF) is a disk image file format. This means that an .uif file holds a perfect copy of a CD/DVD disc. Essentially, an uif file is very similar to the de-facto standard of disk image formats - ISO. However, .uif files also support several interesting features that set them apart from the ISO file format.

For one, they have built-in support for data compression. This means that your CD/DVD backups in the UIF format would take up less hard-drive space than if you used ISO. The efficiency of the compression varies - software, HTML and text documents usually compress well. On the other hand, Video-CD, Audio-CD, DVD-Video and other multimedia formats can be compressed only slightly or not at all.

Additional features of the UIF format are password-protection and file encryption for your more sensitive data. The format also supports the MD5 verification algorithm, which is useful to verify that a file hasn’t been damaged or infected with malware.

Now that I’ve listed all the appealing features of this format, you might be wondering “where’s the catch?” Sure enough there is one, and this is it - the .uif file extension/format is a proprietary one, which means that most disk utilities can’t open it. These files can only be opened with MagicISO (shareware). So to get the full benefits of this novel disk image format you’d have to shell out around $30 bucks.

The other unpleasant aspect of UIF files is the aforementioned incompatibility with other CD/DVD applications. For example, if you send an .uif file to a friend, chances are they won’t be able to open it and will be forced to go looking for a way to convert the UIF to ISO.

In conclusion, while the UIF file format has several appealing features, I wouldn’t recommend it for anything other than infrequent personal use.