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Virtual Floppy Drive – Floppy Disk Imaging and Virtualization Part II

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Published on March 20th, 2006
Category: Utilities

In the previous article of this two-part series, I revealed how to create floppy disk image file from Diskcopy.exe. I was trying to find tools similar to IsoBuster and Daemon Tools – which are used for CD Imaging and Virtualization – that dealt with floppy disk images. As I mentioned in that article, for us PC users, floppy disk and their corresponding tools are necessary since we still haven’t made the complete switch to CDs and USB/Firewire portable drives (unlike our lucky Mac counterparts:)).

Diskcopying from Image to Floppy Drive

After using Diskcopy to make exact image replicas of important floppy disks, what’s a guy supposed to do with them? I use them if I ever have to make physical copies of say startup disks, disk utilities, anti-virus utilities, and operating systems. Normally, if you always recreate the floppy disk using the built-in programs, take for example the Windows startup disk creation utility, it takes ages. But, if you have an image file saved on your computer, all you have to do is run Diskcopy and it will take seconds!

diskcopy filename.img a:

It’s simple as inputting the above text in the command line and replacing “filename” with the actual filename of the desired image file.

Virtual Floppy Drive

Like CDs, its a pain to keep floppy disks. So, I archive all of my important ones with the Diskcopy utility (see previous article). Whenever I need to access the data inside, I don’t need to write it on a floppy disk using the above method and then read it. I can just create a virtual floppy drive so that I can read and write to it just as it was a normal floppy disk! The same basic functionality in Daemon Tools is in Virtual Floppy Drive. The only difference is that you can write to the virtual floppy drive! VFD even supports most all floppy disk variations like 3 1/2, 5 1/4, 2.88 MB, 720 KB, etc!

Usage is simple. It doesn’t even require an installer (Some may consider that a good or bad thing. Personally, I despise installers.).

Just open the program and start the driver.

vfd_start.jpg

You have two virtual drive slots available. Assign the desired drive letter (commonly “B:”) to one of them.

vfd_letter.jpg

Then open the *.img file.

vfd_image_file.jpg

Presto! You can read, write, drag, and drop to the virtual floppy drive!

vfd_drive.jpg


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50 Responses to “Virtual Floppy Drive – Floppy Disk Imaging and Virtualization Part II”

  1. ravi dewangan Says:

    i want a program that emulates the virtual drive of verious sizes ( may be veriable ) . as it must run on verios plateforms like dos ( required ) , w98, wme , wnt , linux , unix etc.

  2. gfn Says:

    i want a program that emulates the virtual drive of verious sizes ( may be veriable ) . as it must run on verios plateforms like dos ( required ) , w98, wme , wnt , linux , unix e

  3. blogger Says:

    You know, I really do not know. I did a quick search and came up with nothing. Why not just use a Flash drive. Most operating systems will accept (read/write) to it natively.

  4. sam Says:

    thanks

  5. pratap Says:

    intersting of nnew sofftwares

  6. kris Says:

    thanks, just what I needed – now i can make bootable floppies as images (i don’t have a physical floppy) with various tools requiring to write to floppy, so later i can boot them with GRUB from an usb drive !

  7. Michael Says:

    Thankyou this programs great =) as i dont have a physical floppy on my “new” laptop lol.

    Oh and it works well on windows vista Home Premium 32-Bit as far as i can see.. Though i had to run it in admin mode.
    Windows Explorer recognizes it as a floppy drive (I saw your bugs list said it didn’t on XP)

  8. Duwayne Says:

    blogger Says:
    May 3rd, 2007 at 8:56 am
    You know, I really do not know. I did a quick search and came up with nothing. Why not just use a Flash drive. Most operating systems will accept (read/write) to it natively.

    To answer your question I have an old program on floppy that only installs from a floppy drive.

  9. John Says:

    Thanks, in addition is it possible to create multiple virtual floppy disk drives, because i need at least two as iam partitioning and installing multiple OS and virtual OS are not an option.
    Cheers

  10. Ronen Says:

    Great software! Keep on the good work.

  11. pimi Says:

    ok

  12. Ali Parjiyanto Says:

    Thanks … this is very helpful utility … perfect work.

  13. joe Says:

    Hi,

    I am a new user to use this vfd.

    I got the error message – “fail to start the vfd driver. The system cannot find the path specified.”

    Do I have to change any thing on BISO and so on?
    Could you please advise if any inputs

  14. ammar Says:

    Thanks … this is very helpful utility

  15. estergon Says:

    Thanks a lot … Working nicely, it helped a lot.

  16. marcelo borrell Says:

    thanks ; this is very very helpful utility

  17. marcelo borrell Says:

    thanks, this is very very helpful utility

  18. marcelo borrell Says:

    thanks

  19. kevlar Says:

    Hi
    I would like to use vfd, but

    Failed to install the VFD driver.
    Access is denied.

    error appeared. I’ve got Vista.
    Can you help me?

  20. prodigywookie Says:

    Hey Kevlar, I don’t know if anyone has answered your question, but for anyone having problems installing the Virtual Floppy Drivers, this is how you fix it:

    right click on vfd.exe (haven’t tried it with vfdwin.exe yet) and click run as administrator. click Allow when the popup box comes up and you’re all set.

    -Devan

  21. Jerry Says:

    Installed on 32-bit srver and it worked great! Also downloaded 64-bit driver by \

  22. Jerry Says:

    Installed on 32-bit srver and it worked great! Also downloaded 64-bit driver by “Critical0”, but neither vfd.exe or vfdwin.exe will run on 64-bit. Does anyone have a 64-bit version of these

  23. Mak Says:

    Installed on 32 bit – worked great! Thanks m8!

  24. vicky Says:

    Thanks, It helped to make bootable flash drive

  25. sdd Says:

    fgdf

  26. sdd Says:

    ft

  27. Arturo Says:

    Dear Evan, thanks for the tip, I also had the error in Vista of Failed to install the VFD driver.
    Access is denied. running as administrator fix it.

  28. Rene Says:

    is good but it doesn’t work for 64 bits

  29. Ameerlal Says:

    Dear Sir,
    I need make virtual floppy drive in my laptop which is opearting with Windows vista premium.This is i need to install Allen bradly Software .Please help me .

  30. Andreas Says:

    This is a great tool!
    I’m using it for batch automation from C# code, and it works like a charm. That is, until Gates & co created Windows 7. WHY?!?!

    Anyone who knows how to use this tool (VFD) or any other virtual floppy tool with a command line interface in windows 7? Suggestions?

  31. Tong Says:

    It does work in windows 7 64.. hit f8 and disable signing of drivers. then run the program as admin.. ofcourse get the 64 version of vfd.sys

  32. Rick Wicks Says:

    I can’t quite tell if this is what I need. I’ve done quite a bit of searching and can’t quite figure out what to do. I wonder if you can briefly tell me if I’m on the right track?

    I’m trying to install Windows 2000 onto a Parallels (virtual) computer on an iMac. The Windows 2000 installation starts with 4 bootable floppy diskettes (or at least the first one is bootable, then it continues to the others) before continuing to the installation CD. But the iMac doesn’t have a floppy drive to get started on.

    So I’m trying to create a virtual floppy drive, put images of the four floppy diskettes into it, and put it onto a CD. I’m hoping that then, when I try to install the system on Parallels in the iMac, it will recognize the bootable virtual floppy on the CD and get started from that. (Because, in Parallels, the iMac has no system to start with whatever.)

    I’ve found programs for creating .img files but I don’t understand how to get them to make an image file from the bootable diskette. I found your programs but don’t really understand how they work for this purpose.

    Sorry, I’m not very experienced at all this. Thanks for any suggestions!

  33. Joe Says:

    I’m trying to get this to work in a 64 bit version of vista and I get the error message saying it does not run in ME and windows 98. How do I disable the signing of drivers on vista?

  34. Livio Says:

    Thanks, very good … this is very helpful utility

  35. Marcelo Says:

    @Joe April 15th, 2010 at 4:03 pm
    I get this msg in Windows 7 64 bit too.
    The same message is given for any and all runs which fail the VfdIsValidPlatform test, regardless of windows version.

    For Windows 7 64 the program refuses to run because the IsWow64Process function returns TRUE.

    So, i can’t undestand how Tong’s advice could help.

    Tong Says:
    March 2nd, 2010 at 11:37 pm
    “It does work in windows 7 64.. hit f8 and disable signing of drivers…”

  36. gauravfunky2001 Says:

    i don’t have a option of create file on control panel. so tell me how to save a file on virtual floppy drive.

  37. Shijaz Abdulla Says:

    The links is dead. Here is one that works:
    http://www.pendriveapps.com/goto/VirtualFloppyDrive/783/2

  38. Neelesh Says:

    I am using windows 7 x64 and VFD is not working, displaying compatibility issue. Is there any way I can create a virtual floppy drive in my system? Please tell.

  39. booter Says:

    I want to make a bootable image file and then boot from it as a virtual floppy drive by adding an entry in boot.ini. I tried using the image created by VFD, but I can’t get it to boot. Does anyone know how to get it to work?

  40. anon Says:

    Found this post in a search. I finally found a fix for Windows 7 64bit users should anyone need it.

    Levicki tech spot
    http://levicki.net/articles/stories/2007/08/17/The_story_of_the_vfdwin_21_64-bit_driver_patch.php

  41. Xantes Says:

    Other than boot-able floppy disks I see no reason whatsoever of imaging a floppy disk! Whatever not boot-able can be copied – as with copy and paste – all the files from the floppy drive to any other copyable medium: HDD, SSD, flash drives, etc.!

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