• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Create a drive image on dos/win95 machine?

P

pcm2a

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 24, 2013
Messages
190
One of my old vintage laptops is a IBM 760ED. It was uncirculated and has a copy of win95 with all of the stock IBM goodness untouched. I thought it would be great to make some kind of image before I mess with it too much.

Backup media: I have access to both a parallel zip 100 drive and also a xircom pe2. So backing up split across multiple 100mb zip disks would be ok. Also backing up over the network (albeit really slowly) to another pc with a ftp server would be ok.

What are my options for good backup software? It would be best if it loaded from dos, since if I needed to restore I may not have access to windows.

Random thoughts on backups:
- If I backup to zip disks I would need to be able to copy the backup from the disks and store it somewhere else.
- If the backup can be burned to a CD afterwards that would be fantastic. I could then restore from a bootdisk with my external cdrom drivers.
- The ultimate best case scenario is if the image could be read in Windows 7. For example (1) Backup (2) Hook up compact flash card to windows 7 (3) Restore backup to CF card (4) Place CF card in laptop (5) Rainbows and Unicorns
 
The fastest way is to remove the hard drive and attach it to an external USB adapter connected to the Windows 7 computer and create the image there. Then copy it to CD or run it in your favorite virtual machine.

Check your Zip Drive software. Some releases had backup software that could span multiple disks. Easy to prepare. Otherwise, image across the network and expect it to take all night.
 
You're right, I should have mentioned removing the drive. Normally I would pop out a drive and use my 3.5 to 2.5 ide adapter to make the image with easeus. These old ibm laptops come with sealed up caddies. If it was one of my old and busted ones I would rip it open and get the standard drive out (done that several times). Since its so pristine I hate to destroy the caddy.
 
I still use an old DOS version of Ghost 2003. You can backup to parallel connected ZIP or JAZ drives for the destination. Or you could use a PCMCIA network adapter and the Universal Network Boot Disk to connect a network drive as your destination. This is how we made disk images when I worked at IBM. The only difference then was that we had to make our own network boot disks.

http://www.netbootdisk.com/

I'm happy to help if you need it. I'm very familiar with this process.

Heather
 
Wow thanks! That netbookdisk looks like a great to go. I'll give it all a shot here locally and may PM you if I get stuck.
 
I just managed to create a drive image of my DOS machine by downloading a Linux floppy (http://mininux.free.fr/uk/) and using DD across NetCat to save the image to my Windows 7 desktop.

I don't think Linux supports the Xircom Pocket Ethernet adapters, though, so it might not work for you. It does support PLIP, though, if you've got another computer with a parallel port you can hook to directly.
 
One of my old vintage laptops is a IBM 760ED. It was uncirculated and has a copy of win95 with all of the stock IBM goodness untouched. I thought it would be great to make some kind of image before I mess with it too much.
Click to expand...

Very good idea. That's usually the first thing I do when I get a "new" old computer.

If it's MSDOS or Win31, then you can just do a zip of the entire drive. Then to restore, just initialize the drive with the correct format and unzip and boot.

If it's a later OS, like WIN95, then I use msdos version of Ghost. If possible - ie. enough space available on the hard drive - I use partition magic to create a second partition. And then Ghost to that partition - a lot faster than trying to Ghost to a parallel port zip drive or other slow I/O. Then I can just remove the HD and connect to my pc and save the Ghost image. Another option is to install second hard drive (if possible) and then ghost to that hard drive.

Back in the days when I used Win95/Win98 on a daily basis, I would set up the system with the base operating system with any required drivers. Then do Ghost image. Then install all my programs and do a another Ghost image. That way when things went wrong in the future (as they always seemed to do), I could just restore and be back in business.

Bill
Smithville, NJ
 
Last edited:
I just managed to create a drive image of my DOS machine by downloading a Linux floppy (http://mininux.free.fr/uk/) and using DD across NetCat to save the image to my Windows 7 desktop.
Click to expand...

Congratulations.

You are halfway there. The real test is: "Can you restore is back to a fresh hard drive and have it boot up?"

As with any backup method, it's only a good backup if you can restore it.

Bill
Smithville, NJ
 
natcha said:
Congratulations.

You are halfway there. The real test is: "Can you restore is back to a fresh hard drive and have it boot up?"

As with any backup method, it's only a good backup if you can restore it.

Bill
Smithville, NJ
Click to expand...

It probably wouldn't boot up on restore simply because I only imaged the partition, and not the boot sector or anything else outside the partition. I can open the image file in 7zip successfully and access the files inside, though.
 
It probably wouldn't boot up on restore simply because I only imaged the partition, and not the boot sector or anything else outside the partition. I can open the image file in 7zip successfully and access the files inside, though.
Click to expand...

I think it might. You would create a partition on the fresh hard drive, restore the image, and then make the partition active and bootable use fdisk /mbr.

When I use Ghost, I select which partition to image. And I can restore it and then boot it.

You should give it a try, if you have a spare hard drive to test it with.

Bill
Smithville, NJ
 
natcha said:
I think it might. You would create a partition on the fresh hard drive, restore the image, and then make the partition active and bootable use fdisk /mbr.

When I use Ghost, I select which partition to image. And I can restore it and then boot it.

You should give it a try, if you have a spare hard drive to test it with.

Bill
Smithville, NJ
Click to expand...

Yeah, that was my idea. I'd restore the partition, then worry about making it bootable.
 
I have 3 different pcmcia network cards so hopefully I can get one of them to work with netbootdisk.
 
SkydivinGirl said:
I still use an old DOS version of Ghost 2003. You can backup to parallel connected ZIP or JAZ drives for the destination. Or you could use a PCMCIA network adapter and the Universal Network Boot Disk to connect a network drive as your destination. This is how we made disk images when I worked at IBM. The only difference then was that we had to make our own network boot disks.

http://www.netbootdisk.com/

I'm happy to help if you need it. I'm very familiar with this process.

Heather
Click to expand...

How does that work? Do you boot with the UNBD disk then switch disks to the Ghost 2003 program and Ghost has access to network drives as destination points? That sounds like something I would like to try. Unfortunately, it appears as if Windows XP will no longer create MS-DOS boot disks. At least my XP -SP3 won't. (it formats them ok, and does chkdsk ok) So creating a UNBD disk is stymied. :confused:
 
Hi Billyray,

Once you have created the UNBD, you boot from the disk to get your computer running in DOS with networking. From there, you simply use the NET USE command to connect to a network drive. If you are using anything later than Windows XP for your network drive share then you need to disable SMB V2 and/or SMB V3 on the computer hosting the file share: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2696547 . I just put the DOS Ghost files in the network share to run it from there.

Do you see the "Create an MS-DOS Floppy Disk" check box when formatting your floppy disk in XP? If so, you need to check that. It can only be checked when you are formatting a floppy disk. If you still can't check it, you can try using the following command from the Command Prompt: format a: /s

Otherwise, type the following command into Google and you should be able to find an image of the disk that you can write to a floppy using WinImage: "MS-DOS Floppy Disk" xp

Good luck!

Heather
 
Hey Heather, thanks for the reply. Yes I've tried the usual in XP. The drive light blinks for a second and its over. Nothing happens, no error, no completion, no nothing. I've seen other complaints of this behavior on Windows XP SP3 mentioned here and there on the web, and I believe MS has removed that functionality. The checkbox can be checked, and everything else works fine, format, chkdsk etc. I tried from the command prompt as well and nothing. In fact it says '/s' is not a valid parameter. The problem with finding a DOS boot disk is that no one seems to have one created from the Windows XP format program. I can easily create a normal one, just not the XP one. I have a fully functional XP SP3 computer with a 3.5" drive, which can be booted (using Grub or ordinary Dos boot disk.)

I found some XP boot disks, but they aren't what the UNBD needs to start with. They have all sorts of other usable files but not the dozen or so that XP would have created if it worked. :(

Do you have an XP Pro SP-3 system to verify that creating a MS-DOS startup disk still works?
 
Caluser2000 said:
Just tried format A: /s on my XP Pro SP3 box and also get "Invalid Parameter - /s"
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've noticed you can't really do that from the command line in Windows anymore. It should work if you go into My Computer, right-click on the drive, select Format, and check the box next to Create an MS-DOS Startup Disk.
 
Did that and tried to boot the disk in a couple of machines but the boot floppy led lit lit up the floppy was ignored and both systems went to booting off the hard drive.

Edit; turned out the first disk was faultly though it seemed to format ok and I got no read/write errors when creating a boot floppy. Worked fine on the second disk I tried. Booted fine off my 486.
 
Last edited:
Billyray:

All good info from Heather. I may have missed what type of disk you are trying to format. Be aware that while XP can read/write to any to media, i.e., 720/1.44 & 360/1.2, it will only let you FORMAT 1.44. You can use 3rd party software with Xp to format other than 1.44 however.
 
Within "My Computer" yes, but you can still format 720k disks fine in xp using a command prompt session using FORMAT A: /T:80 /N:9 No third party tools required. Done it on my usb 3.5" fdd.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top