Best way to archive vintage Mac floppies & CD's to images

I can check, as I have a retail copy of Toast 4, but I'm pretty certain it supports .ISO files.  Toast 4 runs on 68k with System 7 or later.

I don't think anything exists for Classic Mac that supports .bin / .cue.  However, for multi-track CDs, it's probably the best format to use.

Is this "iso" file a full disc image, or a volume image? A full disk image needs to be mounted with 

hdiutil attach -imagekey diskimage-class=CRawDiskImage


for it to work.

A cue/bin image would have to be converted/extracted; I usually use bchunk for these conversions.

cdrdao can be used to create cue/bin images, e.g.

cdrdao read-cd --read-raw --read-subchan rw_raw --datafile imagefile.bin --driver generic-mmc-raw imagefile.toc


and then toc2cue can be used to convert the toc to a cue.

balrog said:

s this "iso" file a full disc image, or a volume image?

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I select the drive when I'm making them. I used imgburn and/or infrarecorder (I believe both will do it) on a Windows 7 machine to make them, then others have downloaded them and burned them from Macs and PCs in the normal way you'd burn an ISO image and reported back that they successfully boot on their machines. I've also burned these images to CD-RW discs and have been able to boot systems such as my Power Macintosh 8600 with them.

I haven't made ISOs of any discs that I know off hand to be multi-session or otherwise need the bin/cue treatment. However, if what I'm reading here is that making an ISO of the drive will work and be sufficient, then I think that's encouraging.

If you'd like to check, all the files I've done this way are here: http://personal.stenoweb.net/oldmac/

Currently, I'm only doing this for files that people request before I can get them on vtools, and my thought process here is that it may only be important to produce modern-compatible files for CDs that are used to boot machines for whatever reasons. I don't see a reason to, say, image a Microsoft Office install CD or a MacAddict coverdisc this way (even though, I did do those things) for the purposes of VTools, because the image can be transferred to a target Mac over the network and mounted without using optical media. (In many cases, images on vtools can be mounted directly over the network, but I have a 40/20 connection and I use it for other things as well, so performance won't be as good as if you copy to local first.)

As far as tools for bin/cue files go, it looks like Imgburn can read them as well.

pcamen said:

Perhaps just imaging at vintage speeds is what is required.

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Just casually, Apple started shipping 24x CD drives in 1998ish and then literally never shipped a faster CD drive at all. If you're using Apple's USB external drive, it's not any faster than what's in a Beige G3 or an original iMac.

That said, you should be able to put a faster/newer drive in a Firewire enclosure, and at the very least you would benefit from a younger mechanism. I've mentioned this before, but my HP PC from 2011 can successfully read CDs that some of my vintage Macs aren't fully able to read. (840av and PB1400 in particular, I don't remember if I tried my 8600 or Beige G3.)

So, I'm definitely not over here suggesting we use, like, very old machines to do this.

The other thing that hasn't been addressed is how we name files. Vintage Macs using the HFS and HFS+ file systems have a 31-character file name limit, including any extensions that are included, either from DOS or from modern tools.

Notably, on VTools anyway most of these files will be in their own directories alongside readme files with more information, so if, say, an Apple CD part number is used, the read-me file can explain what each file is. Similarly, if you have a diskette image called "Installation 2" inside the System 7.1.2 Pro folder, you can presume that that's Installation 2 of the 7.1.2 Pro media set, and not the 7.5.3 media set.

Ah, good point @Cory5412 I always think of those first generation CD drives with like 1x or 2x speeds.  I do have some systems with faster drives, once I get things working.  So much to go through. 

As a sidenote, while I work on the initial pass of copying The Mac Garden Dataset from my Mac Pro to VTools, we still haven't decided for sure what the folder organizational structure of VTools will be.

More on that, and some discussion, somewhere here:





Because the scope is essentially "all classic Mac OS software" (and ultimately, potentially, relevant documentation and other supporting materials) I'm still seeking feedback on how it should be organized.

Cory5412 said:

I haven't made ISOs of any discs that I know off hand to be multi-session or otherwise need the bin/cue treatment. However, if what I'm reading here is that making an ISO of the drive will work and be sufficient, then I think that's encouraging.

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A single-session disc can still have a partition table with multiple partitions, and this is common with classic Mac discs, as well as tricky stuff like ISO9660/Mac hybrid discs.

cue/bin is preferred in general, but conversions to iso are fine. Even so, special handling (e.g. mounting with CRawDiskImage on macOS, or with an offset based on the output of fdisk on Linux) may be required for a "full device" image.

Here is my question: what is the best utility that runs under 8.6 (or even modern utility) to make straight, full-data ISOs?

Just ran up against the image size limit under Disk Copy 6.1.3 - 2GB.  I like to make backup images of all the disks from the systems I get used, cause, often times, stuff works, and it is nice to have a snapshot of how things are working driver and setting wise lest I mess it up later. 

But I have a disk that is 4GB, with apparently more than 2GB of data, and Disk Copy 6.1.3 is telling me that it is too big.  Any one have other ideas for imaging an entire disk under 7.6.1?

Though it would be a bunch of files, you can use DiskDoubler to make multiple files of the disk.

LaPorta said:

Here is my question: what is the best utility that runs under 8.6 (or even modern utility) to make straight, full-data ISOs?

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I don't know of anything. Toast may be able to, but it'll name them .toast. I haven't re-tested for compatibility if you burn a toast as if it were an ISO.

pcamen said:

Just ran up against the image size limit under Disk Copy 6.1.3 - 2GB.

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It's a bummer, both because you can't image big DVDs and because I used to want to use Disk Copy as you described to back up my own hard disks.

For backups, an actual backup tool like Retrospect might be worth looking into, otherwise store all your data on a machine that gets backed up, like a server in a virtualization setup, or VTools.

For imaging the hard disks from random machines you get, my advice is: don't.

Spelunk for a little bit and then reformat that stuff. In general, random macs don't have interesting software, and ultimately what you're doing is snooping through another person's setup. There's >95% always a better way to get a copy of old software. Looking at how real users had things set up is interesting, but I don't think it's worth the disk space it takes to preserve it, nor do I think it's at all ethical to do this.

As a sidenote, you can use up to Disk Copy 6.3.3 on 7.6.1: http://main.system7today.com/updates/76x_powerpc.html but I also run into this limit with DVDs under OS 9, so I don't think 6.3.3 resolves the 2gb limit.

For my part, if I find any OS 9 software that's legitimately on DVD, I'll probably make an ISO with imgburn or the like on a Windows computer.

I’ve got no Windows machine, of course. All else new I have is Toast 14 on my iMac running 10.13. Any way to make ISOs from that? For most of my stuff I don’t think it matters. 15-year old game CDs and the like can just be images for the most part.

so: it depends on the particular disc and the purpose. I’m tempted to say just use dc6 unless it’s a disc with audio tracks or a hybrid disc.

of it’s not special, use dc6, tbh.

disk utility on osx May be able to do this, I haven’t tested, it would be the option to make a cd master as a .cdr file.

I've made CD masters before with Disk Utility, they do burn well as bootable media for, say, OS X install media.

Here is a question for you, Cory: on VTools, I will be uploading stuff soon, my more recent stuff. How recent do you want? I have games and such from the early 2000s that run under early OS X....but they are 4.7 GB DVDs. is that too large for you?

* Back on my desktop.

So, I was chatting with @wthww about this issue and the concept of "operational" vs "preservational" (yes, I know that word doesn't spellcheck) archival/imaging and hosting came up.

Operationally, the goals of a software archive/repo should be to make it easy for people to get what they need quickly with their own computers. It should optimize for software discovery to the extent possible, and where reasonable it should include data in formats that can be accessed directly by vintage Macs. These are all, more or less, my goals with VTools.

I haven't had a chance to test this yet but I think you can use disk utility to make a .cdr image which:

1. Can be renamed to iso to be burned on a pc
   
2. contains all the necessary data track
   

By selecting the actual optical drive in disk utility and making the image based on that, rather than the mounted volume.

What I meant above was, if the CD is relatively simple, DC6 should be suitable. I don't know what proportion of Mac games were multiplatform-same-disc or used tricks like CD audio. Most Mac software is simple.

For "preservational" disc imaging, it really also depends on how complicated the disc is. A bin/cue image is going to correctly store a data CD regardless of how it's laid out. However, for relatively simple discs, DC6, Toast, and ISO should also be good enough to reproduce a CD.

Regarding preservational vs. operational software archiving in general:

I think both are important, and i think we need to consider both. When I talk about Internet Archive being difficult to use, I'm speaking explicitly to the fact that I can't reasonably expect a rando to go download a flux image of a diskette or a bin/cue image of a CD and be able to use them. IA is insanely bad for discovery in general, and in my experience if someone uploads "a cd", at best you'll get the name of the CD or around half the words printed on the front of it in terms of descriptions or potential search terms.

The niche I see vtools as filling is both so we as a community can create an inventory of what even existed, to assist in archival, and so we can make copies of it that are easy to use as part of an operational repository. I would be very happy if as a part of all of that, we contributed to Internet Archive.

Right now, the scope for VTools specifically is Classic Mac OS. 

Software that worked on both OS X and OS 9 is suitable. 4.7-gig files should be fine, but as I mentioned somewhere, I don't think those can be read in and used with Disk Copy 6. In that case, I would rather see a toast or a CDR file than a DMG, mainly because ideally these files will be reproducible with any kind of modern computer (if, somehow, they can't be mounted/used directly on the appropriate vintage Mac.)

The version of Toast I'm using for my VTools work is 5.2.1, which I believe runs on both OS 9 and OSX/PPC. I don't know how back/forward compatible Toast files are.

More modern files than that (anything 'for' OS X, basically) would likely be best handled on something newer. If there's interest, I'm willing to set something up. In my experience, files for OS X should be really easy to handle. Put internet-distributed DMGs and Zips just as they came on a server, image discs as DMGs or CDRs directly from Disk Utility on a Mac. 

Thank you for the clarification. There will be a bunch coming your way!

olePigeon said:

The next one I sent was MacWars.  This one he said has what he calls a "weak bit minefield."

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That makes two of us! I shared my flux image of MacWars with Morris, too.

Can you share your Ultima III image with me? I picked up a functioning CIB on eBay a few years ago and killed my disk trying to archive it. The instructions in the box include a warning that trying to copy the game will damage the disk. They were not kidding.

Guys, I've been playing with the Applesauce device, and it is an archivists dream.  I've got an Apple II drive and an external Superdrive (took a Superdrive from an SE/30 and put it in an 800k drive external chassis) and I can archive any Apple II disk as well as 400k, 800k, and 1.44M Mac disks all on my modern Mac.  

I have yet to find a good use for the flux images.  Does anyone know what they are good for?  I suppose one thing would be to try and repair damaged disks.  But I found a neat way to do this already.  Applesauce can retry bad blocks.  I've found that by repeatedly retrying bad blocks, it is, at least in one test, eventually able to recover many of them.  In the test I did, after 15 retries it went from over 20 bad blocks down to 5 persistent ones.    Does anyone know a strategy for repairing bad blocks?  Does one look at the hex dump and try to guess what the data should be?  

On a positive note, I opened my shrink wrapped copy of Alice Through the Looking Glass and it imaged fine.  I know there are other disk images but no flux image that I know of.  @Cory5412 I seem to recall that you had asked me for a flux image of that game in a discussion about those of us archiving disks uploading them to VTools.  I can't find the discussion now.  Are you still interested?  

In case it bears discussion, on the proper way to archive software (what all to include), Here is what I am doing:

- Disk image file

- Image of front and back (at a minimum) of the box

- Image of the disk itself

- PDF of any accompanying documentation.

Additionally, I am making flux images of anything that has bad blocks, in the hopes that one day it can be used to recover the disk, if necessary.

This is what I would like to get whenever I download an abandonware package. 

Kinda disappointing; of 30 or so Mac floppies I've tried to archive so far, about 60% are bad.  The flux images show that they aren't just a few blocks bad, but basically the entire disk is erased / blank.  Makes me wonder if all floppies are not made the same; some are made more cheaply with materials that just fail over time.  I've given up making flux images of those; they are pretty worthless when almost the entire disk is FF's.