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I have some old games and softwares on 3.5" floppies that are worth archiving. Since floppies demagnetize themselves with time I would like to "clone" them to another medium before it's too late.

Something like an ISO but for floppies would be great. I just want to mount the file to a virtual floppy (either in a regular environment or in visualization).

Is there something like this? I use Windows 8 64-bit (but have access to all Windows since 3.11 in visualization).

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3 Answers 3

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I have used WinImage in the past. Its not open source or freeware, but it is a great program for making images of removable media, such as floppies. It can create images in a variety of common formats as well.

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  • Seems good. Just a question, how do you use floppies images created with WinImage?
    – AlexV
    Commented Jan 31, 2013 at 14:44
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    vfd.sourceforge.net is a great virtual flopy drive emulator. Also, most virtual machines hosts (vmware, hyper-v, virtualbox) can mount virtual floppy images.
    – Keltari
    Commented Jan 31, 2013 at 14:46
  • Winimage works great and there is plenty of info in their Help and KB areas.
    – Dave M
    Commented Jan 31, 2013 at 14:47
  • @AlexV: FileDisk should be included in the WinImage package.
    – Karan
    Commented Feb 1, 2013 at 1:13
  • @Keltari I'm trying Winimage now and when I save my floppy image I ghave the following formats: Compressed Image file (.imz), Image file (.ima) & Virtual floppy Image (*.vfd, *.flp). Which one is the universal one (and that would work with Virtualbox too). Thnaks!
    – AlexV
    Commented Feb 1, 2013 at 1:47
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I am using RawwriteWin which is FREE and then Virtualfloppy to access them when needed, on a mounted drive

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In all honesty Alexv, the easiest way would be to simply copy the data off the floppies, onto your harddisk.

You dont need an exact copy of the disc, as floppies never had any way of telling if the medium they were stored on was a "genuine" floppy or a copy.

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    thats not true at all. Many floppy based programs had anti-piracy features that required the floppy to be in the drive.
    – Keltari
    Commented Jan 31, 2013 at 14:26
  • @Steve Yeah I know but in some cases the installer was span on multiples floppies and 2 floppies could have the same file name so I can't always do this...
    – AlexV
    Commented Jan 31, 2013 at 14:26
  • Folder1 = Disc1 folder2 = Disc2 @Keltari, normally they were interested in a flopy being in the drive that had a certain filename, this can be gotten around with the use of path.
    – Steve
    Commented Jan 31, 2013 at 14:29
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    @steve in same cases what you say is true, but in other it wasnt the contents of the filesystem, but how the disk was written to the floppy. Copying the filesystem would not work.
    – Keltari
    Commented Jan 31, 2013 at 14:32
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    Floppy anti-piracy features include reading sector that is beyond normal formatted space and reading data from it. So I could format 1.44 floppy as custom size and put somewhere after that a sector that contained something only I know. Then there's BAD sector protection - i could MAKE bad sector on a floppy and test if it exist at specified place with my program. If you CAN read it - no game. And so on and so on. So copying file-by-file COULD work, but it also COULD NOT, @Steve.
    – Kitet
    Commented Jan 31, 2013 at 15:30

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