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Disk Imaging software for Windows

famicomaster2

Experienced Member
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Feb 3, 2017
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Southeastern US
Hello. I am here today with an odd dilemma. A friend of the family has gifted me a few old disk drives and controllers - 3 of which are MFM/RLL - and requested that I recover data from them if possible.
Due to a recent move, I do not currently have access to my XT or AT and will not for some time. The oldest machine I brought with me is a Pentium laptop - Unfortunately not helpful here.
I lucked out and my (new) local thrift store had a Pentium II to spare, a bit of work to it later and it will now get to Windows 98SE or Windows 2000 desktop. Goody!

Here's the problem. Disable the primary IDE controller and insert controller card (In this case, a DTC 7287) along with a drive (Seagate ST-277R1). From a DOS floppy, the drive is accessible and data is visible! I was able to recover the documents I was looking for by copying them to the secondary IDE drive and then from there in Windows 2000 copying them to a flash disk. All is well, but I noticed something: The controller pops up in Windows 98SE!

This implies that somewhere Windows 9x still holds support for the ST-412 control interface. I would like to image the drive if possible, but I have found no good answers on what software to use to achieve this. It would be nice to have a full sector for sector backup somewhere for archival.
Even more convenient would be to totally ditch Windows 9x and go to 2000 so I can just put it right on my network partition, and possibly have choice of newer imaging software. However, the controller nor the disk appear in 2000. Strange!

So here is my question:
What is the best full-drive imaging software that will run under Windows 98 or 2000? The machine is a 300MHz Pentium II with 256MB of RAM.
Is there a way to get Windows 2000 to recognize an MFM/RLL disk or controller? I looked through the device list and didn't see anything that looked like one, so I "lied" and picked the generic IDE/ESDI device with the primary resources, which has the same address and ports as the DTC card. The driver installs successfully and Windows 2000 shows that it is loaded and started successfully on boot, but I cannot select manual disk geometry. In the driver options I am only given "Auto detect" or "None." The geometry is entered into the BIOS and the drive functions flawlessly under DOS and 98SE.
Is there another driver I should try? Is there a driver out there somewhere? This would be incredibly useful for backup of drives in the future and of devices I currently have if I could just get it to work.

It is also simply a matter of morbid curiosity as well, if I can get a hold of a Windows 2000 driver that works, who's to say I can't finaggle it into working with XP? I think a 5MB partition on an ST-506 in Windows XP would be really funny, and very interesting. I've got Pentium 4 boards with ISA in storage, I would LOVE to see this in action.

tl;dr MFM/RLL drivers for Win2k or at least full disk imaging software for 98
 
Drive software from that vintage? Other than Ghost or Norton Ghost I dunno.

I never ran an mfm controller past windows 3.11 so I dont know how much further they would be supported. Possibly 95 cant imagine any later.

Good luck, post your findings.
 
Oh, no, the setup absolutely works in 98SE. 2000 just has zero clue what it's looking at. I'm thinking about trying NT4.0 to see if anything is different, but that still leaves me without USB support or network support which defeats the purpose anyways.

I will report back with results when I have some! I am also fighting several other drives from this cardboard box back to life, a Shugart 712 is on my desk right now and half-preventing the machine from booting.
 
PowerQuest Drive Image 2002 and Acronis True Image 6.0 can make images in Windows 98.
 
Well 2000 is just an iteration of what WAS windows NT 5.0 (I used it with the microsoft MSDN pack when it was still called NT 5.0).

It would make more sense to use NT 4.0. How exactly does NT 4.0 leave you with no networking? Its loaded with plenty of networking options?

NT 4.0 can be modded to have USB support:

 
NT 4.0 can be modded to have USB support:
I worked at a place in the early 2000s that still had a lot of NT 4.0 computers, because they skipped 2000 and went straight to XP. There were some OEM drives for USB keyboard and mouse support. If my memory is right it was from IBM for their thinkpad because they had USB only, no PS/2, but part of the contract required the ability to support external keyboards and mice.
 
The USB flash disk support in NT 4.0 is abysmal to say the least. 98SE has the ability but no NTFS.

NT 4.0 and 98SE both have networking support, but my network has many options that need 2000 SP1 or later to connect. It would just make things easier if I didn't have to tear down half my network every time I wanted to use the machine.


Looks like I will be trying out Norton Ghost, many people have recommended it to me so far.
 
The USB flash disk support in NT 4.0 is abysmal to say the least.

Actually, the Inside Out Networks/Digi USB drivers work rather well in my experience, as long as the USB controllers are compatible (some aren't). Even recent-manufacture SanDisk Cruzer Glide USB 2.0 sticks seem to work well with these drivers in my experience. One issue is that having a USB storage device connected at boot time can cause system hanging issues at logon, unless one makes some registry changes so certain network components are started before the IONUSB service (as I discovered after installing an internal USB memory card reader in my system). The Sysinternals FAT32 driver is also needed for working with FAT32-formatted devices.
 
Looks like the driver in Windows 95 used for the DTC 7287 is called "Primary IDE Controller (single fifo)"
In Windows 98SE, the driver is called "Standard IDE/ESDI Hard Disk Controller" and uses the file "ESDI_506.pdr"
The card occupies standard IDE resources (I/O range 01F0-01F7, IRQ 14), so this makes sense. The controller can be set to secondary operation, but I find that it makes the computer drag horribly for some reason. I am not sure why, but I have decided to just leave the card in primary for now and use the secondary IDE channel as the boot & for a CD-ROM. I think I will have to find a Promise IDE card or something to get a secondary hard disk and a ZIP-100 drive like I want. Maybe even LS-120?

The floppy controller part of the card is really annoying for a setup like this, since it can't be disabled (Or at least not that I can figure out) and so you must use it as opposed to any other primary diskette drive controller in the system unless you set the entire card to it's secondary address. Very strange, the floppy controller will always work as primary but it can only be secondary IF the hard disk controller is also secondary. Wonder why that is?
Anyways, the floppy controller uses a standard driver too so no issues there.

Of course, you cannot do anything like a low level format/verify through Windows 98SE, but booting into DOS first to LLF and partition the drive and then getting into 98SE to format it is no problem at all.

The DTC 7287 is a very versatile card, the only drive I've thrown at it so far that it hasn't particularly liked was my new old stock Seagate ST-506, since the 7287 does not support the much slower step rate it requires, nor the RWC control that was part of the original 506 interface (replaced by Head select 8 for the update to 412).

Having done this now, I see no real reason this couldn't be done with other AT class controllers and associated drives, the only thing that put up a real fight in the beginning was a bunch of CMOS and controller BIOS related problems. It would seem, then, that the DTC BIOS (at least, CRN15A, which is what my controller has) is not very well written. It has a habit of hanging the system, looking in the completely wrong spaces for CMOS drive data, and there are actually several visible typos and misspellings ("No CMOS drive information. Plaese Run Setup !"). Maybe someday I will write my own BIOS or go around fixing bugs in this one, but that is a project for another time.

I hope this advice helps someone get their own weird drive shenanigans sorted out - If there are any questions I would be happy to answer.

Just for good measure, here are some pictures of the setup. The drive is an IBM 0665-53, shown working here under Windows 98SE, including showing data on the drive! Linked <here> is a short video of the drive in operation as well, for the extra curious.
IMG_20221109_020955.jpg

IMG_20221109_020959.jpg

IMG_20221109_021003.jpg
 
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