Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your CHD file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.
Convert CHD to another file type
To convert your CHD file to another format, you need MAME or other Disk Image software.
Convert a file to CHD
To convert other file formats to the "Compressed Arcade ROM" file type, you need software like MAME or a similar tool.
About CHD files
A .CHD file is primarily a Compressed Hunks of Data disk image, a format developed by the MAME team to store bit-perfect copies of arcade machine hard drives, CD-ROMs, and LaserDiscs. While excellent for archival storage due to its advanced lossless compression (utilizing LZMA, zlib, and FLAC algorithms), the format presents significant compatibility hurdles outside the emulation ecosystem. Standard virtual drive software and physical media burners cannot read .CHD files directly, and many non-MAME emulators require uncompressed raw data. Users often need to convert these compressed images into ISO, BIN/CUE, or RAW formats to mount them on virtual drives, burn them to physical discs, or load them into emulators like RetroArch cores that lack native CHD support. Additionally, a .CHD file may occasionally be a proprietary Phantom Cine raw video header generated by Vision Research cameras. These video headers are unreadable by standard media players and NLEs like Adobe Premiere Pro, necessitating conversion to MP4 or MOV for editing and playback.
Convert.Guru analyzes your CHD file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert CHD file to ISO, PBP, CDI, CUE, EXE, BIN, PAK, WAD, PK3, PK4, BSP or MAP, you can use MAME or similar software from the "Arcade Emulation Storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert MOD, BIN, CFG, SCX, DAT, MPQ, LOG, CUE, INI, EXE, SCM or ISO files to CHD, try MAME or another comparable tool in the "Arcade Emulation Storage" category.
The CHD Converter Story
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our CHD converter.