DROID stands for Digital Record Object Identification. It’s a free software tool developed by The National Archives that will help you to automatically profile a wide range of file formats. For example, it will tell you what versions you have, their age and size, and when they were last changed. It can also provide you with data to help you find duplicates.
Profiling your file formats helps you to manage your information more effectively. It helps you to identify risks (and therefore plan mitigating actions). It can also help you to save money, for example by supporting data reduction.
You can download our latest version of DROID for free. For previous versions go to https://droid.sourceforge.net/. For more information, see our PRONOM resource.
If you are experiencing any problems using DROID, contact us at pronom@nationalarchives.gov.uk.
Using DROID can help you to manage a specific information risk – the risk to digital continuity. DROID helps you to gather information you need to understand your information assets. This can help you to define your digital continuity requirements, assess where your information is at risk and plan mitigating action.
The information you get from DROID can also help you to reduce the amount of data you hold, enabling you to work more efficiently and cost-effectively.
The guidance below will help you to use the DROID file profiling tool to examine your information, and will enable you to:
- understand the drivers for file profiling
- understand how to run DROID
- interpret your results, avoiding common pitfalls