On Unix-like operating systems, like Linux or BSD, a loop device is a regular file or device that is mounted as a file system. … For example, an ISO file containing internal structure details of files and directories may be mounted as a loop device, and accessed by the operating system, like a physical disk partition.

What is loopback device in Linux?

A loopback device in Linux is a virtual device that can be used like any other media device. … The loopback filesystem associates a file on another filesystem as a complete device. This can then be formatted and mounted just like any of the other devices listed above.

What is a loop drive?

The loop device is a block device that maps its data blocks not to a physical device such as a hard disk or optical disk drive, but to the blocks of a regular file in a filesystem or to another block device.