What is an IMG file?
In the field of computing, the files with .img file extensions deal with the storage of raw disk images of disks such as floppy disks, hard drives or optical discs, etc. This raw image consists of a binary image of the source with specifications of the sector by sector.
The contents of the IMG file format are dependant on the file system of the disk specified for the creation of the image. When it comes to CD ROMs and DVDs the images of these files contain data of the corresponding sectors along with the control headers and fields for the error correction according to each sector.
The IMG files have specified content for the disk, so these are compatible with those specific programs that are suitable for the detection of their file systems.
IMG File Format
During the years when a floppy disk was used for the storage purpose and management of data storage, these files were developed to access the raw images of the disk. Many programs were referred by the IMG files. These were created by disk imaging programs. In the Windows operating system programs like power, a software burner is used to handle these files.
Technical Specification
There are other file extensions like IMA and IMZ similar to this file format. The size of these images is always in the form of multiple different sector sizes. This size is 512 bytes for floppy disks and hard drives. The raw size of the sector is 2,352 for the CD Roms and DVDs. The size of the raw disk image is multiple of this size.
This format is mostly used with the programs like RawWrite and WinImage.These programs use this format for reading and writing the images of floppy disks. Moreover, these files can be converted onto other more popular file formats by using some software such as PowerISO.
As IMG files have no added data except the contents of the disks, these IMG files can just be handled by the programs automatically and detect the file systems. For example, a usual disk image of a raw floppy disc starts with the boot sector of FAT and can be utilized for identifying the file system.
Optical media’s disc images are mostly accompanied by the descriptor file. It explains the disc layout and involves information like track limits and these are not just stored in an image file of raw form.
