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Best way to backup 3½ floppy disks?

Vifa

Experienced Member
Joined
Dec 30, 2007
Messages
85
Hi there

I have recently been using FloppyImage and WinImage to backup my floppies. I have saved them as .imz files.

Why do I use both FloppyImage and WinImage? - Because even though it is the same file extension, a .imz file created in FloppyImage can't be opened in WinImage. If anyone can explain why, please tell me.. :)

Anyway, that was not my question. I want a dataloss backup of my floppies, and I have been wondering if the .imz is dataloss. Would the .img be better? What is the overall difference between .imz and .img?


Any advice/suggestions/thoughts?

Best Regards
Vifa
 
First of all, I have only experience with winimage.

imz is basicly img with integrated zip compression. just for saving space.

I would backup them as img and compress them in any compression format you like as packs (for example one archive for each program).

img are easyly readable by other imaging tools than winimage.
 
imz files are not lossy. that would be a horrible idea for a disk backup utility. ;)

you can save them as ima files in winimage of course. that's what i do, and yes TNC is right any utility can read them. in fact, i tend to write them back to disks in linux just using the dd command.
 
I use Winimage to create IMG files.

I can then either re-create the disks on my 1.44 drive in my modern desktop, or download them (via FTP) onto my 386 and using Norton Commander 5.51 I can write them out to 5 1/4" formats.

I also use my 386 to create IMG files with NC 5.51 and then upload them to my modern machine and either tweak them or archive them.

This works very nicely for backup and storage of disk images.
 
imz files are not lossy. that would be a horrible idea for a disk backup utility. ;)

you can save them as ima files in winimage of course. that's what i do, and yes TNC is right any utility can read them. in fact, i tend to write them back to disks in linux just using the dd command.


Oh great. So that means .imz and .ima files are not lossy? .. :)

The Norton Commander 5.51 sounds nice, I will think I will try that..
 
One thing I found to take a bit more space but add some redundancy is using a compression program on the files that can create a verifiable/repair file incase of corruption. Over years of buying a new hard drive, copy everything to new system, rinse and repeat you quickly notice things mysteriously get corrupted. If it's public data then no big deal you can get it again, but for rare things you really need to archive it's a huge PITA. Even CDs and DVDs we burn end up flaking after 5 years without any use (again, losing whatever data was important 5 or 10 years ago).

If you have it archived with something that can create a repair archive this would help dramatically. I know most archivers can do this, I just don't recall how many can repair from it (WinRar is the one I most commonly had to use this feature on).
 
One thing I found to take a bit more space but add some redundancy is using a compression program on the files that can create a verifiable/repair file incase of corruption. Over years of buying a new hard drive, copy everything to new system, rinse and repeat you quickly notice things mysteriously get corrupted. If it's public data then no big deal you can get it again, but for rare things you really need to archive it's a huge PITA. Even CDs and DVDs we burn end up flaking after 5 years without any use (again, losing whatever data was important 5 or 10 years ago).

If you have it archived with something that can create a repair archive this would help dramatically. I know most archivers can do this, I just don't recall how many can repair from it (WinRar is the one I most commonly had to use this feature on).


I have thought about it, and I think I will backup my floppies this way:

First, copy the content from the disk to a folder, and then compress it to .rar.

Second, create an .ima file of the disk, and then compress the .ima file to .rar.

So actually it will be two backup of the same floppy.


Anyway, I am not familiar with corruption of files as it has never happened to me before. How can I be prepared to prevent this? I use winrar too, you say there is an option in winrar to repair?

Vifa
 
It wasn't clear what kind of disks you're backing up.

I use a Catweasel board and do a literal backup of each disk, without regard to its content. The image files are pretty huge--roughly 8x the raw capacity of the diskette.

On the other hand, I have a lot of non-PC, non-Apple diskettes, so this works for me and I don't worry about missing something.
 
I use a Catweasel board and do a literal backup of each disk, without regard to its content. The image files are pretty huge--roughly 8x the raw capacity of the diskette.
Can this be done with the supplied software or do you use something else? So far, I've only used my Catweasel for imaging "normal" disks, but it'd be good to get some floppies with less-usual formats backed up, too.
 
Can this be done with the supplied software or do you use something else? So far, I've only used my Catweasel for imaging "normal" disks, but it'd be good to get some floppies with less-usual formats backed up, too.

It's my own software. Is Tim Mann's CW2DMK general enough?

vifa said:
It is 3½ floppies, they are mostly 1.44 mb, but also some few on 1.0 mb and 720 kb.

Actually, I was asking more about recording mode and data rate. FM vs. MFM, 250, 500, 600 or 1000 kbit/sec, GCR, etc.
 
It's my own software. Is Tim Mann's CW2DMK general enough?
I've installed CW2DMK, but I really just need to take the time to sit down and play with it some more. The docs mention that it doesn't support Amiga disks, which put me off a bit as that's what makes up the bulk of what I want to image.
 
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