SABDU

Latest revision as of 14:15, 2 January 2026

SAB Diskette Utility, also known as SABDU, is a shareware disk utility for Windows 3.x. It was created by Stewart A. Berman.

[edit] Identification

Disk image files start with the null-terminated ASCII string SAB Diskette Utility (hexadecimal 53 41 42 20 44 69 73 6b 65 74 74 65 20 55 74 69 6c 69 74 79 00)^[1]. A version number in the form of a null-terminated ASCII string (like 2.10) comes next. It is unclear if this version number means the version of the program that created the file or if it tells apart variants of the file format. According to ^[2] you can just skip the first 46 bytes and treat the remainder of the file as a regular disk image.

[edit] Software

• http://www.saberman.com/SABDU/ - Latest official version (2.92) from author's website
• HxCFloppyEmulator allegedly supports reading SDU image files^[3].
• FlashFloppy can also read SDU image files^[4].
• Winimage and its companion tool Extract claim support for SDU image files.

[edit] Sample files

• dexvert samples — archive/sabDisketteUtilityDiskImage
• https://discmaster.textfiles.com/browse/38912/AST_DataDisc_UK6050d.iso/original/astdu → *.SDU
• SABDU distribution archives, which usually can be found on software compilations as SABDUxxx.ZIP, also include TEST0360.SDU, TEST0720.SDU, TEST1200.SDU and TEST1440.SDU image files since version 2.10.

[edit] References

1. ↑ File extension SDU details at File Extension Seeker
2. ↑ Flash Floppy Issue #95 (SDU File Format)
3. ↑ https://github.com/jfdelnero/HxCFloppyEmulator/tree/main/libhxcfe/sources/loaders/sdu_loader
4. ↑ https://github.com/keirf/flashfloppy/blob/master/src/image/img.c