What’s the best way to archive old Apple install discs?

[victor.muc]

Hey everyone,

I recently picked up an iMac G3 and a Titanium PowerBook G4, both with their original install discs plus a few additional ones that I’d like to properly archive.

Most of the discs are German so they’re relatively rare and I want to make sure they’re preserved correctly.

What’s considered best practice these days?

* Should I create the images on a modern Mac or Windows PC, or is it better to use period correct hardware (an older PowerBook / iMac or a 2006/2009 Mac mini)?
* Which tools are recommended for accurate archival?
* And which format is preferred: .toast, .iso, or something else?

Thanks in advance and happy new year!

 

[finkmac]

I generally use imgburn on windows.

.iso is sufficient unless it's something fancy using multiple tracks... then you can use bin/cue

stay far way from toast

 

[victor.muc]

I generally use imgburn on windows.

.iso is sufficient unless it's something fancy using multiple tracks... then you can use bin/cue

stay far way from toast

Thank you so much!

 

[LaPorta]

If using the older Macs, under earlier OS X, use Disk Utility to make an image of the drive device into a .cdr.

 

[Arbee]

.cdr files can be hard to use, particularly if you aren't on an OS X machine. A regular .iso is generally more widely compatible.

 

[joshc]

Use dd

 

[adespoton]

imgburn on Windows and dd on non-Windows is the best for optical media. Toast overwrites the disc header data with its own info, so you end up with a possibly functional but modified image. I'm not sure there's a reliable way to make a clean image of optical media in classic Mac OS.

 

[cheesestraws]

imgburn on windows is the easy way. Using dd can be more of a pain because you have to make sure you have the right partition, especially for bootable disks. Using disk utility for bootable CDs is a good way to get mangled images, don't do it.

 

[ymk]

Your ripping software should only be concerned with tracks, not partitions.

ISO for single track discs, BIN/CUE for multiple tracks.

 

[LaPorta]

.cdr files can be hard to use, particularly if you aren't on an OS X machine. A regular .iso is generally more widely compatible.

If you rename a .cdr to .iso, it’s the same thing. Plus if we are dealing with Macs, why not? Macs also don’t generate .iso files via Disk Utility.

 

[joshc]

If you rename a .cdr to .iso, it’s the same thing. Plus if we are dealing with Macs, why not? Macs also don’t generate .iso files via Disk Utility.

Because some people might not be on a Mac, and why would you use a proprietary format vs a more standard one?

 

[cheesestraws]

If you rename a .cdr to .iso, it’s the same thing. Plus if we are dealing with Macs, why not? Macs also don’t generate .iso files via Disk Utility.

because it mangles partition and boot information, and is generally a bad idea. this is how all those mangled images on mac garden get made. please don't add to them, or advise other people to.

 

[LaPorta]

because it mangles partition and boot information, and is generally a bad idea. this is how all those mangled images on mac garden get made. please don't add to them, or advise other people to.

Hasn’t made one bad image for me, ever, under 10.4 or 10.6.

 

[cheesestraws]

Hasn’t made one bad image for me, ever, under 10.4 or 10.6.

lucky you. also, methodologically, "works for me" is a terrible reason to advise someone to do something, though i appreciate it can be difficult to tell the difference between an opinion and an empirically grounded truth

 

[LaPorta]

Because some people might not be on a Mac, and why would you use a proprietary format vs a more standard one?

Oh of course, that makes sense, but if it’s all you happen to have…

 

[joshc]

Hasn’t made one bad image for me, ever, under 10.4 or 10.6.

Ok, so it worked for you, but that doesn’t mean that @cheesestraws isn’t correct here.

This is equivalent of a car dealer saying “they all do that” or “it works fine for us”.

 

[adespoton]

It's surprising how many people contact me saying "I'm trying to install [Mac OS] on this [Mac / emulator] and it won't work" and the problem turns out to be that their disc image is mangled due to imaging it using the most convenient method (usually Toast or Disk Utility, but other tools show up in the image headers as well).

The problem isn't generally with the file format (raw DMG files are essentially ISO-9660 compliant, and toast images generally just have slightly different data in the image header), it's with the tool used to create the file. Different tools consider different bits of disc data to be important to store as part of the tracks and as part of the track header, and with tools like Toast it gets even trickier, as the header info changed between versions, and changes further depending on what type of disc is being imaged. Of course, there's always issues going the other direction too -- old HFS CD images contain all the track data, but if you try burning them (or mounting them in an emulator), that data won't be interpreted correctly, causing the disc to be rejected in many modern contexts. But using dd to write it out to a CD-R results in a disc that will boot just fine on a 199x CD-ROM drive attached to a 199x Mac.

There's been in-depth discussions on this topic (including the offending track and header data) over on MG, and the end result over there was a shell script for DD that does imaging the correct way without room for mistakes, even if you're not familiar with the tool. Imgburn seems to do this automatically for Windows; I've never known it to make an incorrect image and not visibly fail.

 

[cheesestraws]

There's been in-depth discussions on this topic (including the offending track and header data) over on MG, and the end result over there was a shell script for DD that does imaging the correct way without room for mistakes, even if you're not familiar with the tool. Imgburn seems to do this automatically for Windows; I've never known it to make an incorrect image and not visibly fail.

using actual data gathered from users and doing an investigation into the problem that results in a piece of automated tooling? that's crazy talk, we should all just follow the advice of some randomer on the internet pulling opinions out of their dvd drive

(I didn't know about the shell script, that is a cool thing)

 

[adespoton]

Oh of course, that makes sense, but if it’s all you happen to have…

Any Mac that has Disk Utility also has DD. If DD by itself is too complicated to use, https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/dumptoiso-a-script-os-x-dump-cds-and-dvds-iso-files is your friend. It works on all versions of OS X and macOS to date, and likely also works on most flavours of Linux and BSD (and maybe even on Windows under WSL, Cygwin, MSYS2 or Busybox).

 

[LaPorta]

Any Mac that has Disk Utility also has DD. If DD by itself is too complicated to use, https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/dumptoiso-a-script-os-x-dump-cds-and-dvds-iso-files is your friend. It works on all versions of OS X and macOS to date, and likely also works on most flavours of Linux and BSD (and maybe even on Windows under WSL, Cygwin, MSYS2 or Busybox).

The script is a great option, thank you for this.

…I’m also not pulling things out of wherever. I’m just saying it’s a viable option if done properly, and the OP was also asking for Mac-based options. I’m not putting down Windows options or dd or anything.