3.5 floppy imaging

[Fred Cisin]

On Mon, 18 May 2015, andrew clarke wrote:
> Sometimes the volume label is important, for some DOS installers.

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.

> Also, for bootable disks obviously you want a copy of the boot sector
> and system files, preferably in the correct order.

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