Disk Image Formats

File Format
Name	Disk Image Formats
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Disk Image Formats ; ;

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

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

These file formats represent a data image of one of the physical floppy disk (etc.) formats. In addition to the raw data from the disk/tape/etc, 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. See Archiving for archive and backup formats that are filesystem-based rather than raw-sector-based. See Filesystem for the filesystems.

Floppy Disk Image Formats

Images created directly from floppy disks.

Generic Sector Images

Acorn

Acorn Archimedes Disk Image

Amiga

ADF (Amiga)
Disk Imploder (Amiga) (.dmp, .dex)
Disk Masher System (Amiga) (.dms)

Amstrad

DSK (CPCEMU), used for Amstrad and related disks (typically 3" disks)

APF Imagination Machine

APD (APF Imagination Machine emulated disk) (.apd)

Apple II series

Apple Disk Image (Apple II disk image with header) (.2mg)
DART (Apple)
Disk Copy 4.2 (Apple)
Disk Copy 6 (Apple)
DSK (Apple II), used for Apple II disks (typically 5.25" disks)
Nibblized disk image (.nib), an Apple II disk image format that works for copy-protected disks

Atari

ATR (SIO2PC)
DCM (Disk Communicator)
DI (800XL DJ emulator)
DIM (F-Copy)
MSA (Magic Shadow Archiver)
PRO (APE ProSystem)
SCP (Spartados)
ST disk image
STT (STEEM)
XFD (Xformer)

Commodore 64/128

C64 Nibbler Format (.nib) (created by mnib)
D64 and its variants (D71, D81, all with optional error information) from the C64
G64 C64 raw (GCR coded) disk image

Macintosh

Apple Disk Image (MacOS or OS X disk image with header) (.dmg, .smi, .img)

PC (DOS/Windows)

FDI (Formatted Disk Image)
IMA
IMD (ImageDisk)
TD0 (TeleDisk)
IMG (HD-Copy disk image)
DDI

Tandy

Misc.

DiscFerret floppy image (.dfi)
Famicom Disk System (.fds)
MESS floppy image (.mfi)
Pasopia disk image (.d88)
Raw disk image (.img) (ie, created with dd)

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
DDP (Disc Description Protocol)
DMG (Apple)
ISO image (.iso)
ISZ
MDF and MDS
NRG (Nero Burning ROM)

Hard Disk Image Formats

HDV

Virtual Machine Disks and Virtualization Image Formats

OVF (Open Virtualization Format)
qcow (QEMU)
VDI (Virtual Disk Image) (VirtualBox) (.vdi)
VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) (Microsoft) (.vhd)
VMDK (Virtual Machine Disk) (VMWare) (.vmdk)

Tape Image Formats

APT (APF Imagination Machine emulated tape, logical bits) (.apt)
APW (APF Imagination Machine emulated tape, raw audio) (.apw)
CAS (Atari; Digital Cassette Image system)
PZX (ZX Spectrum)
TAP (ZX Spectrum)
Tap file (contains data from Commodore data cassette)
TZX (ZX Spectrum)
Unified Emulator Format (UEF; also does Acorn disks and ROMs)

Unknown

lbl See here for details: http://classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/2012-December/326747.html

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