3.5 floppy imaging

On Mon, 18 May 2015, andrew clarke wrote: Good point! Unless the disk has some special weirdities, that is easy enough. For sets of disks, I like to determine whether the disk breakdown is essential. For something like Windoze, putting all of the disk contents into a single directory can be handy, but for some other packages, I prefer to put the files of each disk into a separate subdirectory, and use the volume label as the name for that subdirectory. Unless the DOS version of the copies produced doesn't matter, . . . I wrote out the steps in DEBUG to copy the boot-sector (I hope that I didn't screw up and type it in wrong!) Yes, most versions of DOS require the 2 hidden files to be in specific places on the disk AND in the DIRectory, by copying them first. Early versions of the SYSTEM program will only install the same version as what is running, so that will often not be an option. It's easy, if not paying attention to forget to copy the hidden files, or not realize that some INSTALL program is overly dependent on volume labels, etc. It all tends to come back to whether what's needed is the disks themselves, or the information stored on them. And once everything is copied to the Brainspawn's InfoSphere, (Only twice the size of three regular DataSpheres) none of the originals will still be needed. Nevertheless, unless there is reason to do otherwise, I'd rather simply copy the files and when recreating, simply create a new system disk to put them on, IF NEEDED. And, unless it is NOT "normal" standard stuff, I still don't see a reason to "IMAGE" ordinary stuff. BUT, of course, if the original poster is NOT talking about DOS disks, then imaging may be truly essential. With Don Maslin gone, it could be a major hassle trying to find a boot disk for an Amada, Jonos, Sony M35 CP/M, etc. BTW, I still have difficulty with calling 3.5", "EARLY"! -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com