Disk Image Formats

File systems and other file formats described on this page's parent page describe entities that exist on disks as they would normally used.

However, there are also file formats that allow a physical disk to be "imaged" into a file, either to re-copied onto a physical disk later, or else used by an *emulator* of the computer system that would have originally.

These file formats represent a data image of one of the physical floppy disk formats. In addition to the raw data from the disk, these formats may contain metadata that the corresponding emulator environment uses to correctly access the data.

Typically, when archiving a physical disk for later use, a physical disk will be imaged into one of these file formats. Sub-pages of this page should contain information on the format itself as well as instructions on how to extract a physical disk into that disk image format, including information about what physical drives are required, what software to use and how and what OS that is run under.

See also ROM and memory images for images of memory, and Floppy disks for the physical floppies.

Floppy Disk Image Formats

Images created directly from floppy disks.

Generic Sector Images

• Acorn Archimedes Disk Image
• ADF (Amiga)
• Amiga DiskMasher compressed image (.dms)
• C64 Nibbler Format (.nib) (created by mnib)
• D64 and its variants (D71, D81, all with optional error information) from the C64
• DART (Apple)
• DiscFerret floppy image (.dfi)
• Disk Imploder (Amiga) (.dmp, .dex)
• Disk Copy 4.2 (Apple)
• Disk Copy 6 (Apple)
• DSK (CPCEMU disc image), used for Amstrad and related discs (typically 3" discs)
• Famicom Disk System (.fds)
• FDI (Formatted Disk Image)
• IMD (ImageDisk)
• G64 C64 raw (GCR coded) disk image
• MESS floppy image (.mfi)
• Pasopia disk image (.d88)
• Raw disk image (.img) (ie, created with dd)
• TD0 (TeleDisk)

Physical (Hardware) Images

• DRAFT (Software Preservation Society intermediate format)
• IPF (Software Preservation Society image format)

Optical Disc Image Formats

CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, BluRay, GD-ROM etc.

• BWI (BlindWrite Image File)
• CDI (Disc Juggler)
• CloneCD Control File (.ccd, .img, .sub)
• CUE and BIN
• DMG (Apple)
• ISZ
• MDF and MDS
• NRG (Nero Burning ROM)

Hard Disk Image Formats

• VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) (Microsoft)

Virtualization Image Formats

• OVF (Open Virtualization Format)

Forensics formats

• AFF Advanced Forensics Format
• Expert Witness (i.e. EnCase)

Tools

• The Sleuth Kit and Autopsy can read raw, Expert Witness, and AFF formats
• WinImage to read, write and create images, also lots of info