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DROID is a software tool developed by The National Archives to perform automated batch identification of file formats. Developed by The National Archive's Digital Preservation Department as part of its broader digital preservation activities, DROID is designed to meet the fundamental requirement of any digital repository to be able to identify the precise format of all stored digital objects, and to link that identification to a central registry of technical information about that format and its dependencies.

DROID uses internal signatures to identify and report the specific file format and version of digital files. These signatures are stored in an XML signature file, generated from information recorded in the PRONOM technical registry. New and updated signatures are regularly added to PRONOM, and DROID can be configured to automatically download updated signature files.

DROID is free and open source software made available under the New BSD License. The source code can be downloaded from our Github repository.

Find out more about how to use DROID for information management activities.

Current version

Download the current version of DROID (v6.1) (ZIP, 30.60Mb)

User requirements

DROID requires Java 1.6 Standard Edition (SE) and should work on any platform which supports that.
DROID has been built and tested on:
  • Ubuntu 11.10 Server 32 bit / OpenJDK Java 1.6.0_24
  • Ubuntu 12.04 Server 32 bit / OpenJDK Java 1.6.0_24
  • Ubuntu 12.04 Desktop 64 bit / Oracle Java 1.6 update 34
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6.3 64 bit / OpenJDK 1.6.0_24
  • CentOS 6.2 64 bit / Oracle Java 1.6 update 33
  • Linux Mint 13 Maya 64 bit / OpenJDK Java 1.6.0_24
  • Microsoft Windows 7 (64 bit) / Oracle Java 1.6 update 34
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 (64 bit) / Oracle Java 1.6 update 32
  • Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) / Java 1.6.0_29-b11
Note: DROID 6 will not currently function with Java 7.

Support

User support is available from our Google Groups discussion page.   Bug-fixes, feature requests, and code support should be raised through our Github issues page.   We welcome contributions of new formats and format signatures to the PRONOM registry. If you wish to contribute, please use our online form.

Signature Files and their release notes can be found below:

Previous versions

Versions of DROID prior to 6.1 are available from our Sourceforge site.

This page contains ZIP files. See plug-ins and file formats for help in accessing these file types.