Disk Image Formats

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File Format
Name Disk Image Formats
Ontology

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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. Forensics and Law Enforcement has formats for preserving drive contents with metadata for investigations.

Contents

Floppy Disk Image Formats

Images created directly from floppy disks.

Generic Sector Images

Acorn

Amiga

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

Atari

Commodore 64/128/PET/CBM

  • 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

PC (DOS/Windows)

Tandy

ZX Spectrum

Misc.

Physical (Hardware) Images

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

Optical Disc Image Formats

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

Hard Disk Image Formats

Virtual Machine Disks and Virtualization Image Formats

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)
  • T64
  • 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

Tools

See also Disk Imaging Software & Systems, and Forensics and Law Enforcement.

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