GitHub - aaru-dps/Aaru: Aaru Data Preservation Suite (original) (raw)

Aaru Data Preservation Suite v6.0.0-alpha.19

Aaru

Copyright © 2011-2026 Natalia Portillo claunia@claunia.com

You can see user documentation here

What is Aaru?

Aaru (named after the Egyptian paradise where the righteous dwell eternally) is the ultimate Data Preservation Suite — your all-in-one solution for digital media preservation and archival.

Aaru is designed to assist you through the entire workflow of digital media preservation — from the initial creation of disk images (commonly called "dumping") all the way through long-term archival storage.

🔧 Key Features

Media Dumping

Aaru can dump media from virtually any drive you have:

It works with drives connected via ATA, ATAPI, SCSI, USB, FireWire, and SDHCI interfaces, producing archival-grade images in multiple supported formats.

Hardware Flexibility

You don't need specialized hardware. Aaru will always try to extract the most accurate, archival-quality image from your media using whatever drive you have available. All parameters are fully customizable, with sensible and battle-tested defaults.

Image Management

Filesystem Analysis & Extraction

Aaru recognizes dozens of filesystems and can display detailed information about them. For many filesystems, you can extract the complete contents — including all files, extended attributes, and alternate data streams.

Archive & Game Package Support

Beyond disk images, Aaru supports compressed archives and game packages, enabling you to view and extract their contents as part of your preservation workflow.

Dual Interface

Not comfortable with command lines? Aaru includes a modern, fully-featured graphical user interface that makes preservation accessible to everyone.

AaruFormat — The Archival Standard

We provide our own archival-oriented format, AaruFormat, specifically designed for preservation. It stores:

Metadata Sidecar Generation

Aaru can generate metadata sidecars in an open JSON format, perfect for integration with external systems and third-party software. These sidecars contain all extractable information from any supported image format.

System requirements

Aaru is created using .NET 10 and can be compiled with all the major IDEs. To run it you require to use one of the stable releases, or build it yourself.

Usage

aaru.exe

And read help.

Or read the documentation.

Media image formats we can read

Media image formats we can write to

Supported archives

Supported partitioning schemes

Fully supported file-systems (identify and extraction)

Supported file systems for identification and information only

Supported checksums

Supported filters

Partially supported disk image formats

These disk image formats cannot be read, but their contents can be checksummed on sidecar creation

License

Aaru is licensed under the GNU General Public License v2 license. Some components may be licensed under different licenses; see their respective documentation for details.