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/exFAT, NTFS, HPFS, MFS, HFS, HFS Plus,  ISO9660,  ext2/ext3/ext4,  btrfs,  Minix,
             ReiserFS,  Reiser4, Linux romfs, Linux cramfs, Linux squashfs, UFS (some variations), SysV FS (some
             variations), JFS, XFS, F2FS, 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                                       DISKTYPE(1)