Disk image is a file which stores entire content & structure of a disk or a volume. This disk could be hard disk, USB flash drive, tape drive or optical media such as CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray disk. Besides, it uses various file extensions that includes .ISO, .DMG, .BIN, .VHD etc.

• Disk images came to the picture when floppy disks were highly popular. Thereafter, disk images have been being used to duplicate various disks.
• In the beginning, disk images were used for backup and disk cloning of mainframe storage media.
• Disk images are replica of a whole disk or a disk partition. Hence, they are often used for duplication of CD, DVD in .ISO file format.
• MacOS distributes software in Apple Disk image (.DMG extension) when software are downloaded via browser.
• Windows operating system also distributes software online as disk images (.ISO extension).
• In virtualization, virtual machine monitor creates and store their virtual machines in a hard disk image (.VHD for Hyper-V & Xen, .VMDK for VMWare, .VDI for VirtualBox)

The file belongs to the category of Disk Image Files.

application/x-disk-image

Disk Image can be opened in various software depend on their file format