In my articles on Daemon Tools and ISO Buster, I introduced freeware applications that let you create and manipulate *.ISO image files, or files that are exact CD/DVD replicas. In ISO Buster, you can rip *.ISO images. In Daemon Tools you can create virtual CD/DVD drives from those *.ISO images so that they act just like real disks inserted into the computer.

But, what about floppy disks? I am fully away that they are pretty decrepit. In fact, Apple Computers have long abandoned the archaic, slow, error-prone, and small-capacity 3 ½” disk. There are reasons why floppy disks (unfortunately) are still in use.

• IBM-compatible PC users (which is most people) have not fully achieved that Apple milestone. However, we are slow moving towards that direction. I saw evidence of this while shopping around for a new computer. Some of the Dells did not include a floppy disk drive. Imagine that!
• Another thing to point out is that floppy disk drives are sometimes necessary to install an old operating system, to partition the hard drive, and to get into the DOS command-line prompt, which is essential for running programs like anti-virus, specialized regedit, and corrupted disk sector scan. These programs require single-task operating systems.
• One more point is that floppy disks are a necessary way to transfer files between old computer or even new computers if a USB or CD/RW is unusable or available.

That being said, in this two part series I will be introducing programs that do the exact same thing as Daemon Tools and ISO Buster.

Diskcopy

In the same way that ISO Buster creates CD/DVD Image Files, Diskcopy creates Floppy Disk Image Files. However, the interface is not so user-friendly. Since floppy disks are now pretty primitive, it should come to no surprise that the interface for floppy disk image creation is pretty old. The interface is in command-line DOS. The following is the “man” (Linux-speak for manual) of diskcopy.exe.

DISKCOPY R2.04 Diskette copying utility
Copyright (C) 1990,1997 Caldera, Inc. All rights reserved.

DISKCOPY [SOURCE] [DESTINATION] [/1][/A][/M]

SOURCE and DESTINATION may be a disk drive, or a disk image file
(only disk drives supporting removable media may be used).

/1 copy only the first side of the disk
/A audible warning of disk change and copy complete
/M make multiple copies of a single disk or image file
/V verify that the disk is being copied correctly

Examples:
DISKCOPY A: A: /M
Make multiple copies of a disk using only drive A:
DISKCOPY B: C:\IMAGE\DISK1.IMG
Generate an image file from disk in drive B:
DISKCOPY C:\DISK2.IMG A:
Copy the image file C:\DISK2.IMG to disk drive A:

As you can see, it is pretty minimalist compared to many other manuals. Basically, to create a floppy disk image, input

“diskcopy a: filename.img”

Simple as that! Just change “filename” to the desired name you want to use. Next week, I’ll be discussing how to use these image files as virtual floppy disks. Stay tuned!

Related Articles

• Virtual Floppy Drive - Floppy Disk Imaging and Virtualization Part II
• VMWare Player and Virtual PC - An OS in an OS
• Darik's Boot and Nuke: Completely and Securely Wipe Partitions Hard Disks
• IsoBuster: Easy CD (DVD) Backup and Data Rescue Recovery Tool
• Tftpd32 for Windows - Unleash the PXE BIOS Network Boot Feature Within

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