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What's the best way to make images of floppies?

facattack

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Joined
Mar 7, 2007
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Bucks County, PA
One time I downloaded a software for Windows that had a GUI. It wasn't a DOS program that needed a command prompt to be typed out.

You opened it up, the program had browsable menus for what disk you wanted to back up and then you selected where you wanted it to save on your desktop.

Problem is I forget what it was called and if it were shareware.

I have some 3.5 floppies and don't really feel the need the ship them when I can just digitize them and send them digitally to whoever I need to send them to.
 
There's several programs to make actual disk images but is that what you really need? For ordinary floppies you can ZIP them and be done with it.
 
Creating a .ZIP folder for each diskette's contents will work. Winimage does the same thing. It exports the disk's contents to a disk image file (usually .IMA or .IMG). I do not know however if WinImage will export to a .VFD for use with MS VPC 2007, although Winimage will read .VFD files.
 
I record images using code I wrote for a Catweasel controller. I've gone back to images of oddball floppies that were made years before, sitting around waiting to be decoded and figured them out without ever touching the original disk again.

But I suspect that's not what you're talking about.
 
Winimage or rawrite2 should be able to make compatible disk images of a floppy disk to file that you can use with VMs. I personally have just used rawrite or dd (linux) to make most images I use.
 
If you're only looking to image standard-format PC floppies, rawrite for Windows is perfect for the job. Small, simple, doesn't get in the way of anything, and it's free. WinImage is nice if you want to manipulate the filesystem in a FAT disk image, but it is shareware.
 
I record images using code I wrote for a Catweasel controller. I've gone back to images of oddball floppies that were made years before, sitting around waiting to be decoded and figured them out without ever touching the original disk again.

But I suspect that's not what you're talking about.
Sometimes, Chuck... I suspect that you post just to make sure that we keep wondering how much there is that you really don't already know... ;) j/k

I'd still love a Catweasel for making images of copy-protected software, but without the expertise to write the programs for it, or to analyze the raw data that is produced, it's a moot point.... at least for me :)
 
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