NAME

     disktype — disk format detector

SYNOPSIS

     disktype file...

DESCRIPTION

     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.

USAGE

     disktype can be run with any number of regular files or device special files as arguments.
     They will be analyzed in the order given, and the results printed to standard output. There
     are no switches in this version. Note that running disktype on device files like your hard
     disk will likely require root rights.

     See the online documentation at <http://disktype.sourceforge.net/doc/> for some example
     command lines.

RECOGNIZED FORMATS

     The following formats are recognized by this version of disktype.

     File systems:
           FAT12/FAT16/FAT32, NTFS, HPFS, MFS, HFS, HFS Plus, ISO9660, ext2/ext3, Minix,
           ReiserFS, Reiser4, Linux romfs, Linux cramfs, Linux squashfs, UFS (some variations),
           SysV FS (some variations), JFS, XFS, Amiga FS/FFS, BeOS BFS, QNX4 FS, UDF, 3DO CD-ROM
           file system, Veritas VxFS, Xbox DVD file system.

     Partitioning:
           DOS/PC style, Apple, Amiga "Rigid Disk", ATARI ST (AHDI3), BSD disklabel, Linux RAID
           physical disks, Linux LVM1 physical volumes, Linux LVM2 physical volumes, Solaris x86
           disklabel (vtoc), Solaris SPARC disklabel.

     Other structures:
           Debian split floppy header, Linux swap.

     Disk images:
           Raw CD image (.bin), Virtual PC hard disk image, Apple UDIF disk image (limited).

     Boot codes:
           LILO, GRUB, SYSLINUX, ISOLINUX, Linux kernel, FreeBSD loader, Sega Dreamcast (?).

     Compression formats:
           gzip, compress, bzip2.

     Archive formats:
           tar, cpio, bar, dump/restore.

     Compressed files (gzip, compress, bzip2 formats) will also have their contents analyzed
     using transparent decompression. The appropriate compression program must be installed on
     the system, i.e.  gzip(1) for the gzip and compress formats, bzip2(1) for the bzip2 format.

     Disk images in general will also have their contents analyzed using the proper mapping, with
     the exception of the Apple UDIF format.

     See the online documentation at <http://disktype.sourceforge.net/doc/> for more details on
     the supported formats and their quirks.

HOMEPAGE

     http://disktype.sourceforge.net/

AUTHOR

     Christoph Pfisterer <chrisp@users.sourceforge.net>

SEE ALSO

     file(1), gpart(8)

                                           Feb 21, 2005