What is a .IMG file?
IMG is a raw, sector-by-sector copy of a disk, card or floppy. Written by tools like dd and Win32 Disk Imager.
- Did you know
- An IMG is a bit-for-bit copy, so it can recreate a drive exactly, partitions and all.
- The .img extension is notoriously ambiguous, also used for GEM raster graphics, Garmin map data and Android system images.
- Because an IMG copies a whole drive rather than one volume, it begins with the partition table and is the usual format for Raspberry Pi SD-card backups.
- What Analyser reads
- Identify disk and virtual-machine images: ISO, VHD/VHDX (Hyper-V), VMDK (VMware), QCOW2 (QEMU), and VDI (VirtualBox). For raw IMG images it decodes the partition table (MBR/GPT) and the first volume's filesystem - FAT16/32, NTFS, exFAT - with label, cluster size, and volume size.
- Depth of analysis
- .IMG 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 .IMG file
- Drag a .IMG 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.