[SOLVED] How best to image old 3.5" floppy disks?

[Bassquake]

I have some old 3.5" floppy disks which contains music files (unknown what format or type) and would like to image whatever's on them to an iso so I can analyse later.

Ill probably use WinImage but should I use a USB floppy drive or a cabled floppy drive (I have a FDD port on the motherboard).

Was wondering if it would be better with cabled as would have lower level access?

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Either one would work I should think

 

[TerryLaze]

and would like to image whatever's on them to an iso so I can analyse later.

What's the reason for this? A floppy image will be a 1.4Mb file and you could copy hundreds of them to a single cd.

Agree with above, both connections will do the same job.

 

[Bassquake]

What's the reason for this? A floppy image will be a 1.4Mb file and you could copy hundreds of them to a single cd.

Because I don't know how its formatted. It could be a proprietary format like an Akai sampler. I figure its best to make an image file that I might have to mount into a virtual machine in order to read the data.

 

[TerryLaze]

Because I don't know how its formatted. It could be a proprietary format like an Akai sampler. I figure its best to make an image file that I might have to mount into a virtual machine in order to read the data.

No virtual machine is going to read an akai (or whatever) disk no matter if it's iso or img (or other floppy image) , a VM is nothing more than a normal system.
If there is an emulator for whatever the floppies come from then it will most likely also need a floppy image and not an iso image.

 

[fzabkar]

I would use the "cabled FDD" port on your motherboard. Then image the drive to an ordinary IMG file which you could analyse with DMDE (free disc editor / data recovery software).

BTW, I have analysed the file system on an Akai MPC2000 sampler:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=132


Edit:

DMDE can search for file signatures. The free version can recover up to 4000 files from any one folder, so I expect that it will recover all the data.

 

[TerryLaze]

You can also just load them up in a hex editor and search for known file signatures
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_file_signatures

FileKeySearch is the automated version of this, it has some keys (file signatures) but you can also add as many as you want with the key manager.

Google Code Archive - Long-term storage for Google Code Project Hosting.

code.google.com

 

[Bassquake]

I would use the "cabled FDD" port on your motherboard. Then image the drive to an ordinary IMG file which you could analyse with DMDE (free disc editor / data recovery software).

BTW, I have analysed the file system on an Akai MPC2000 sampler:
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=132

Edit:

DMDE can search for file signatures. The free version can recover up to 4000 files from any one folder, so I expect that it will recover all the data.

Cool. I will look at DMDE, Ive ordered a USB floppy drive for now. Ill get a cabled FDD one if that doesn't work

By the way the link about the Akai gives a warning on Chrome "The site ahead contains harmful programs". Im guessing its because it has exe files on the page.

 

[fzabkar]

The software on that site triggers some malware warnings because it accesses HDDs at firmware level. In fact there have been warnings generated by several data recovery sites recently. HDD Oracle is often targeted by cowardly forces in the data recovery business who don't like its philosophy of openness.

 

[Bassquake]

The software on that site triggers some malware warnings because it accesses HDDs at firmware level. In fact there have been warnings generated by several data recovery sites recently. HDD Oracle is often targeted by cowardly forces in the data recovery business who don't like its philosophy of openness.

Thought as much. I downloaded it anyway. Will let this thread know if I have any luck with the disks.

 

[Bassquake]

Reporting an update.

I used the DMDE with a usb floppy drive and there was some text amongst the hex gibberish which said "w-30 song data disk". So these are Roland W30 Sampler disks!

I then used various apps such as SMFW30 to rip the samples to wav and a sng file to midi which Ill probably redo at some point to assign the samples to the notes in a DAW.

Thanks all for your help!