System Requirements and Compatibility
To ensure optimal performance from MetaDefender Drive, the target device must meet the minimum requirements listed on this page. MetaDefender Drive can still run on devices that exactly meet or below the minimum requirements, but only in Lite Mode.
To boot and run MetaDefender Drive on a target device with hardware specifications meeting or below the minimum requirements, MetaDefender Drive must be flashed activated with all the engines copied using the MetaDefender Drive Toolkit.
System CPU and Memory Minimum Hardware Requirements
Recent Intel i3 or comparable dual-core 64-bit processor
- Modern multiple-core 64-bit processors are recommended for better performance and experience
4 GB of system memory (RAM)
- 8GB or more RAM is recommended for better performance and experience.
HDD or SSD (PATA/IDE, SATA, NVME, SCSI, and USB interfaces are supported)
Internet access (for activation and updates/upgrades)
1024×768 display
USB Type-A port. USB Type-C is not officially supported. However, MetaDefender Drive can boot via a type-A to type-C USB adaptor.
MetaDefender Drive does not support ARM and RISC-based processor architectures.
Updating engines from the MetaDefender Drive OS requires the target device to have at least 8GB of RAM and to be inserted in a USB 3.0 port.
Operating System, File System, and Disk Encryptions Compatibility
Windows® XP, 7, 8, 8.1, 10, 11; Windows® Server 2012, 2016, 2019:
- ** File Systems:
- FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, exFAT
- ** Encryptions: BitLocker, both User Password and Recovery Key
- _ MetaDefender Drive does not yet support hardware-based full disk encryption (comes as default on some Windows Home laptops) _
Windows Embedded XP and 7
macOS and Macs: Intel-based Macs from 2006 to 2017:
- ** File Systems: HFS, HFS+, APFS
- Encryption: FileVault for APFS
Linux: Debian 5 based (or newer), RHEL 6 based (or newer):
- ** File Systems: EXT2, EXT3, EXT4, XFS, BTRFS, ReiserFS, JFS, ZFS
- Encryption: LUKS/LVM2
Supported Archive Files
- The supported archive formats are: Zip, 7z, JAR, RAR, RAR5, TAR, ISO, CAB, ARJ, LHA, LZH, RPM, DEB, LZMA, WIM, DMG, XAR, MSM, SFX, XZ, VDI, VHD, CPIO, HFS, APK, GZ, MSI, TAZ, TGZ, TBZ, BZ2, VIB, AR, ALZ, TSE, TSEC, TSEZ, ACE, PST, OST, OFT, IPA, JMOD, MSIX, APPX, EGG, DLL, PGP (with password only), TBWX, SPF, XPI, and VTAR.
- MetaDefender Drive can also extract self-extracting archives created by both 7zip, WinRAR, PKZIP, IExpress.
- Microsoft Office Documents (e.g., DOCX files) are detected as archive files by default.
- Email/Calendar files (e.g., EML, MSG, ICS) are extracted to scan header, body, attachments.
- Encrypted 7z, Zip, RAR, PDF, MS Word (DOC, DOCX, DOCM, DOTX, DOTM)/Excel (XLS, XLSX, XLSM, XLSB, XLTM)/PowerPoint (PPT, PPTX, PPTM, PPSM, POTX, POTM) can be decrypted by the archive module with a given password.
- VHD, VMDK, and VDI (or virtual disks) are supported but not recommended to be scanned using MetaDefender Drive USB due to its limited storage capacity (64GB). To scan virtual disks, we recommend the alternative approach documented here "Boot and scan virtual machines".
Supported Encryptions
For other 3rd party encryption, please contact OPSWAT Support.