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

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)
WRP

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

A2R disk image
Apple Disk Image (Apple II disk image with header) (.2mg)
Disk Copy 4.2 (Apple)
Disk Copy 6 (Apple)
DSK (Apple II), used for Apple II disks (typically 5.25" disks)
EDD disk image
Nibblized disk image (.nib), an Apple II disk image format that works for copy-protected disks
SDK - See NuFX.
WOZ disk image

Atari

Atari 8-bit

ATR (SIO2PC)
DCM (Disk Communicator)
DI (800XL DJ emulator)
PRO (APE ProSystem)
SCP (Spartados)
XFD (Xformer)

Atari ST

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

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

MSX

PDI (Protected Disk Image)

PC (DOS/Windows)

86F (86Box)
ApriDisk
CFI disk image
CopyQM
DDI (DiskDupe image file)
Disk Express (.dxp)
DSQ
FDF Image (EZ-DisKlone)
FDI (Formatted Disk Image)
IMA
IMD (ImageDisk)
IMG (HD-Copy disk image)
LoadDskF/SaveDskF (.dsk)
Quick Release Sector Transfer (Compaq)
RIM (EZ-DiskCopy PRO)
TD0 (TeleDisk)
XPACK disk image (.xdi)

Tandy

ZX Spectrum

Misc.

Anex86 PC98 floppy image (.fdi)
D88 (.d88, .1dd, .2dd)
DiscFerret floppy image (.dfi)
DSK (Oric)
Famicom Disk System (.fds)
LDBS disk image (.ldbs)
MESS floppy image (.mfi)
Pasopia disk image (.d88)
Raw disk image (.img) (ie, created with dd)
Compressed Hunks of Data (.chd)
SD HxC Floppy Image (.hfe) 1
SuperCard Pro (.scp)
Wang Virtual Disk image (.wvd)

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. For the physical formats, see Optical Discs.

BlindWrite Image File (.bwi, .bwt, .b5i, .b6i) wiki
CDI (Disc Juggler)
CloneCD Control File (.ccd, .img, .sub)
C2D Roxio
CIF Image Roxio
CUE and BIN
CyberLink P2I
DDP (Disc Description Protocol)
DMG (Apple)
Domesday Duplicator (.lds, .ldf, .raw)
GI (Sonic Global Image File)
ISOBuster Managed Image (IBP/IBQ)
ISO image (.iso)
ISZ
MDF and MDS
NRG (Nero Burning ROM)
NTI CD Image (.ncd) 1
TOAST (Roxio Toast)
XDI (Extended Disc Image)
TOC (CDRDAO)

Optical Disc Project Formats

Disc Burning Software Project files

Nero Burning ROM
- NRI (CD-ROM Compilation)
- Nero CoverDesigner
- NSD Super VCD Compilation
- NRV Video CD Compilation
- NRE CD Extra Compilation
CDL (Corel CD Creator)
Easy CD Creator (CL2, CL3, CL4)
CL5 (Roxio EasyCD Creator 5)
RCL (Roxio Creator Classic)
ROXIO (Roxio Creator Classic/Easy Media Creator)
ROX (Roxio Creator NXT)
DMSD (Roxio MyDVD)
DISC (Roxio TOAST)
DVD Sonic (Sonic myDVD .dvd)
NTI CD-DVD Maker (.cmd)
Adobe Encore (.ncor)
DVD Studio Pro (.dspproj)
iDVD (.dvdproj)
CyberLink Power2Go
CD Architect (.cdp)
DVD Architect (.dar)

Hard Disk Image Formats

Virtual Machine Disks and Virtualization Image Formats

OVF (Open Virtualization Format)
qcow (QEMU)
VDI (Virtual Disk Image) (VirtualBox) (.vdi)
VFD (Virtual Floppy Disk) (Microsoft) (.vfd)
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)
SIMH TAP (SIMH emulator's tape file format)
T64
TAP (Oric)
TAP (ZX Spectrum)
Tap file (contains data from Commodore data cassette)
Tape Image Format (TIF) (used for seismic data)
TZX (ZX Spectrum)
Unified Emulator Format (UEF; also does Acorn disks and ROMs)

Unknown

lbl See here for details: [1]

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
Foremost: console tool to recover files from disk images
disktype: detect format of disk or disk image
TrID File Identifier: recognize many disk image formats
bca-webtools
xmount: emulates various disk image formats for use in emulators requiring them

Links