What is a .DSK file?
DSK is a raw floppy-disk image, common in retro computing and emulators.
- Did you know
- A DSK image is a sector-by-sector copy of an old floppy disk.
- The .dsk (CPCEMU) format is the de-facto image for 3-inch floppies of the Amstrad CPC, PCW and Spectrum +3.
- Its extended variant can store multiple copies of a sector to reproduce the deliberate flaws of copy-protected disks.
- As disk images
- Open raw disk images (IMG, IMA, DSK) like a folder - Analyser mounts the FAT12/16/32 filesystem, whether a bare SD card / USB / floppy image or an MBR-partitioned disk, and lists every file in a browsable tree and treemap so you can click any one to analyse it, reading the volume label, cluster size and free space along the way; it also carves every image out of the raw sectors, recovering deleted and orphaned photos the directory no longer lists. It identifies virtual-machine and optical images (VHD/VHDX Hyper-V, VMDK VMware, QCOW2 QEMU, VDI VirtualBox, ISO) and shows the partition table; non-FAT filesystems (ISO 9660, ext2/3/4, NTFS, exFAT) are identified but not yet browsed. Compressed backups (IMC - Runtime Software / GetDataBack; ADI - Active@ Disk Image / AOMEI Backupper) are identified with their label and details; convert them to a raw .img in the tool that made them to browse and carve them.
- As disk images / firmware (more)
- Identify and read more disk images, firmware and VM files: TRX router firmware, USB DFU images, UEFI/BIOS flash volumes (.fd/.rom), Linux UBI volumes, Android sparse images (.simg), U-Boot FIT (.itb), raw floppy images (.dsk/.ima/.vfd with FAT boot sector), VMware snapshot metadata and NVRAM, Parallels VMs and disks (.pvm/.hdd), OVF manifests (.mf) and Veeam backups (.vbk).
- Depth of analysis
- .DSK is an identification-grade format: Analyser recognises it from its bytes and decodes the header metadata it carries, rather than opening it in a full viewer. Formats that do get a full viewer are marked "Full" on the formats page.
- Open a .DSK file
- Drag a .DSK file onto the Analyser home page (or tap to pick one). It is identified entirely in your browser - nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and it works offline once installed.