Get files from BLOB file

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I have got 4 files.
.DAS, .DAT, .D01, .IDX. They are a BLOB export from a (unknown) database system.
How can I retrieve the picture files and other things from this 4 file?
What tool, application, etc. should I use to retrieve the pictures?

What I have tried:

I have tried to collect as many info as I can from Internet using Google.

Posted 13-Dec-16 23:55pm

J Horvath

Updated 14-Dec-16 1:48am

OriginalGriff

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Jochen Arndt · Answer 1 · 2016-12-14T00:42:00

Solution 1

Read the first bytes of the file (e.g. using a hex editor) and compare them with the "magics" of known file types. See List of file signatures - Wikipedia[^].

If you have access to a Linux system you can also use file(1): determine file type - Linux man page[^] to detect the type.

Once the type has been determined you can rename the files using the appropriate extensions and open them with applications that support the specific types.

Posted 14-Dec-16 0:42am

Jochen Arndt

Comments

J Horvath 14-Dec-16 7:31am

The first bytes (using a hex editor) show that the file .DAT might be a GZIP file with a .GZ extension. After renaming it, Windows recommended many ZIP application to extract the file. Looking into the file with one of them, I see there is only one very big file (2GB). So this is not that I wanted. This files includes many picture files. With a Notepad I can see in the .DAS files the file names:
AJ -C.PNG 011040611004.SVG -* 011040611004_TH.PNG -* Â 019030606000.SVG ï/ „ 019030606000_TH.PNG sP ‘ 019030611000.SVG T
But in the .DAT files there are just "chinese" characters!
Anyway, in the hex editor I have, there is "Resource extractor", I do not know what it means, but it shows the particular picture files in the .DAT file. It is full of .PNG files.

Jochen Arndt 14-Dec-16 7:44am

Looking for strings does not help much. While you can see file names you are still not able to extract them.

Focus on the binary representation of known file formats. But if the data were stored using a proprietary format, there is no chance to get them out without knowing the format.

Regarding the GZ (Gnu Zip) file:
It might be a TGZ (Gnu Zipped TAR file). TAR (Tape ARchiver) is a Linux backup utility. If so, it might contain multiple files (TGZ -> TAR -> contains uncompressed files).

Have a look at 7Zip (www.7-zip.org). That can handle a lot of archive formats including many used by Linux like GZ, TAR, and TGZ.

Richard MacCutchan · Answer 2 · 2016-12-14T01:48:00

Solution 2

See .idx File Extension - What is a .idx File Type? | ReviverSoft[^].

Posted 14-Dec-16 1:48am

Richard MacCutchan

Comments

J Horvath 14-Dec-16 7:55am

???

Richard MacCutchan 14-Dec-16 8:03am

It is a site where you can find out what file types are generally given what extensions. So armed with that information you can go and look for the applications that may be able to decode them.

J Horvath 14-Dec-16 8:08am

Ok. Thx.