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

[Unknown_K]

It's pretty amazing to me what sort of price an external 800k drive commands today.

They would be for the Apple IIgs which at one time was pretty common as dirt (or the much more uncommon ones used on the first compacts).

Were there 400K external drives like the one used on the first compact Mac (single sided)? 

Reminds me of my original early production IBM 5150 which I think has single sided 180K 5.25" floppy drives.

Early 68K macs with superdrives should have no problem making images of 800K disks or making new disks from images. It was later generation drives with newer OS that had issues with them. 400K disks I am not sure about, but I have a Central Point Deluxe Option Board for the PC that reads then just fine as long as they are not copy protected.

 

[pcamen]

Were there 400K external drives like the one used on the first compact Mac (single sided)?  

Yes, there are.  I have one. 

Early 68K macs with superdrives should have no problem making images of 800K disks or making new disks from images. It was later generation drives with newer OS that had issues with them. 400K disks I am not sure about, but I have a Central Point Deluxe Option Board for the PC that reads then just fine as long as they are not copy protected.

I believe a 1.44 Apple Superdrive can read and write 400k disks too.  But other ones like the Imation drives for G3 iMacs can't read or write 400k disks.  I use a Superdrive in an 800k housing for my Applesauce (which can't yet read 1.44 capacity disks) and it can archive 800k or 400k disks just fine. 

 

[Dog Cow]

Early 68K macs with superdrives should have no problem making images of 800K disks or making new disks from images. It was later generation drives with newer OS that had issues with them. 400K disks I am not sure about, but I have a Central Point Deluxe Option Board for the PC that reads then just fine as long as they are not copy protected.

Operating System does not matter so long as you are using Disk Copy. Disk Copy has its own Sony disk driver and can read and write any format that the disk drive itself can read: Apple II ProDOS, Lisa, DOS, MFS, HFS, etc.

With Disk Copy, I read and write 400K MFS disk images on a Power Mac G3 running Mac OS 9.2, even though the operating system won't mount MFS volumes. And no Mac Operating System will mount Apple Lisa disks, yet they are copied just fine with Disk Copy too.

I believe a 1.44 Apple Superdrive can read and write 400k disks too.

Yes. All the way from a Mac SE/30 up to a desktop Power Mac G3.

 

[pcamen]

Nudder 3.5" external disk on eBay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/223928775444?ul_noapp=true

$49.99 BIN with $12 shipping but Make Offer is available. 

 

[olePigeon]

Just FYI:  I think post System 6 you can't copy files to a 400k floppy from Finder, but you can still read it.  You have to use Disk Copy to write a complete disk if you're working with 400k disks.  Disk Copy will also report that 400k disk images are corrupted when mounted, but they're actually fine.

 

[Dog Cow]

Just FYI:  I think post System 6 you can't copy files to a 400k floppy from Finder, but you can still read it.

Finder 7.1 can read and write 400K MFS disks. It won't show MFS "folders" on such disks (which actually are resources in the Desktop file). Files dragged to trash from an MFS disk will be erased immediately (becaue MFS doesn't support real folders, which is how the Trash works).

 

[olePigeon]

I haven't had much luck with 400K MFS in System 7 Pro.  It won't let me copy files to a 400K floppy.  But Disk Copy has no issues creating one, though.

 

[Dog Cow]

You are right: at some point, Apple axed write support for MFS disks, but it wasn't immediately after System 6. I used ResEdit 2.1.3 on System 7.1 to make my System 6.0.3 MFS disk to boot on a Mac 512K (see that article in the Mac 512K Blog). I was directly modifying the System file on the MFS disk.

 

[dcr]

Were there 400K external drives like the one used on the first compact Mac (single sided)?  

Yes, there are.  I have one. 

I know this isn't the eBay thread, but I saw this post and then this auction today:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Apple-Macintosh-400k-Ext-Floppy-Drive-M0130-For-Early-Apple-Macintosh/392663944999