PQI Converter

Extract text from Drive Image backups (PQI)

Select File
Drop or upload your .PQI file

Online File Converter

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How to extract text from your PQI file

Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your PQI file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.

Convert PQI to another file type

To convert PQI backups to another format, you need PowerISO or other Disk Image software.

Convert a file to PQI

To convert other file formats to the "Legacy Backup Archive" file type, you need software like PowerISO or a similar tool.

About PQI files

The .pqi extension is most commonly associated with PowerQuest Drive Image, a legacy disk imaging utility used in the late 1990s and early 2000s for system backups and disaster recovery. These files contain a sector-by-sector copy of a hard drive partition, often compressed to save space.

The Problem: Legacy Lock-in

Because PowerQuest was acquired by Symantec (now Gen Digital) in 2003, the original Drive Image software is discontinued. Users holding .pqi archives often face significant friction: modern operating systems like Windows 10 and 11 cannot natively mount these images, and the original software drivers are incompatible with current hardware. This creates a "digital dark age" scenario where valuable archived data exists but is inaccessible.

The Solution: Conversion & Extraction

To access the data, you generally need to convert the .pqi file into a modern, mountable format or use a third-party extractor.

For Virtualization (Best for Archiving): Convert the .pqi file to ISO or VHD (Virtual Hard Disk). This allows you to mount the image in a Virtual Machine (using software like VMware Workstation or VirtualBox) to browse files as if the original computer were running.
For File Extraction: Tools like PowerISO can open .pqi files directly, allowing you to drag and drop individual files out of the archive without full conversion.

Alternative Meaning: USGS Geochemical Data

In scientific contexts, a .pqi file may be an input file for PHREEQC, a geochemical modeling program developed by the USGS. These are typically small text-based files defining chemical reactions, unlike the multi-gigabyte disk images.

Convert.Guru analyzes your PQI file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.

Users also converted 002, SRR, BACKUP and EDZ files.

FAQ

If you want to convert PQI file to BAK, BACKUP, OLD, TMP, TEMP, ARC, ZIP, TAR, GZ, 7Z, RAR or ISO, you can use PowerISO or similar software from the "Disk Image Backup" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….

To convert SNAPSHOT, OLD, IMG, RESTORE, ISO, COPY, VMDK, TMP, VHD, BAK, ARCHIVE or BACKUP files to PQI, try PowerISO or another comparable tool in the "Disk Image Backup" category.

The PQI 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 PQI converter.