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The purpose of disktype is to detect the content format of a disk or disk image. It knows about common file systems, partition tables, and boot codes.
The program is written in C and is designed to compile on any modern Unix flavour1. It is self-contained and in general works without special libraries or headers. Some system-dependent features can be used to gather additional information.
On this page:
Download
- Resources
- Recognized Formats
- Related Software
Other pages:
Documentation
- File System Sampler
Download the source tarball here:
No precompiled binaries are available at this time. Compiling disktype is simple and straightforward, so I don't see this as a great loss. If you want to build packages for your favourite distribution, please go ahead and let me know so I can list them here.
Juan Manuel Garcia Molina has made a package for Debian GNU/Linux, currently available in the unstable and testing trees. A Fink package is avaliable in the unstable tree. Solaris packages maintained by Dagobert Michelsen are available at OpenCSW.
The documentation is still evolving and therefore not included with the source code. You can read it online instead.
This project is hosted by SourceForge. You can use the trackers to submit bug reports, feature requests, and patches. The latest development source is available from the CVS repository. Other resources are listed on the project summary page.
As of version 9, disktype knows about the following formats. For more detailed information, please see the documentation.
File systems:
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Partitioning:
Other structures:
Disk images:
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Boot loaders:
Compression formats:
Archive formats:
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If you're looking for recovery software, try gpart. It scans the whole disk, sector by sector, to reconstruct the (PC-style) partition table.
The file command identifies a wide range of file formats using magic numbers. It recognizes archive and compression formats, and also some file systems.
GNU Parted is a tool to manage partitions. It is capable of resizing certain file systems and can detect some others, too.
1) So far it has been compiled on Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Mac OS X/Darwin, BeOS, QNX, Solaris, HP/UX, and Cygwin.