Update: IZArc’s installer includes several adware offers that try their best to confuse and misguide the user so that these offers are installed on the user system. I highly suggest you use an alternative, like one of the CD and DVD mounting tools listed below.
When you search Bing or Google for software to extract Bin files, you end up with links to commercial programs like Magic ISO. It is not easy to find free software to extract Bin files on a computer system in the search engines. Before I show you how to do just that for free, I would like to start with a short description of the Bin format and alternatives to extracting the file contents to the system.
Bin is an image format, that is commonly used on the Internet. It is usually accompanied by a cue file of the same name that has instructions on how to burn or mount the image properly. Most CD and DVD burning programs support Bin and Cue files, and one valid option is to burn the file to CD or DVD to access the files. It is on the other hand not a straightforward solution. A free burning software is ImgBurn that supports those files.
Another possibility is to mount the bin file on the system, which basically emulates the CD burning. Free tools that can mount bin files are OSFMount, Virtual Clone Drive or WinCD Emu
Update 2: Since IZArc’s adware offers have become even more obtrusive than before, we have decided to no longer link to it. Use a program like Bandizip instead which can extract Bin files as well but ships without any adware offers. End
If you just want to extract the bin file on your PC, you can use a free archiving software that supports the extraction. One of the programs that is capable of that is IZArc, which I first reviewed in 2007 here on Ghacks Technology News.
IZArc supports a wide variety of archiving and CD/DVD imaging formats, including the Bin format. The program adds context menu entries to the Windows Explorer right-click menu by default, which you can use to extract the Bin files after installation.
Just right-click the bin file in question and select IZArc > Extract Here to extract the file and folder structure to the current directory. You can alternatively open the Bin file in IZArc which is probably the better option if you just need a file from the image and not all files.
The original bin file will be left untouched if you opt to extract it to the computer. The same is true if you open it in the program, but be aware that the changes that you make there might alter the file permanently (for instance if you decide to delete a file).
Is there another method to extract Bin files that I have forgotten to mention? Let me know in the comments.