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I use windows 2000, I used DSKMGR to create a DSK image of a copy protected 360k without any issues. The issue I think is XP and its lack of support for legacy hardware.

In fact i have just created an image of Speedsave 4000, from a 360k, and ran it on BlueMSX.

Could someone with Visual C++ compile the example program with following changes:

#define DISK_SIDES 1
#define DISK_SECTORS 9

Somehow this project has something against me... On MSX I noticed that my disk dumping programs, that I have on my HDD, really suck, when it comes to bad sectors.

I also tried to download Linux Live CD (SLAX) but when I tried to start it, it crashed in dosen of different ways. Sometimes I was able to even login with root password but mostly not... After I gave up, windows wanted to check all my harddrives. I must say, this was not fun experience...

heheh, quite funny...

I never had problems with Knoppix... But maybe there's something weird on your PC?

Ok, I tried to download Knoppix and it was much more "fun"
I was able even to read the disk images! Now only problem is, that I don't have a place to put them. My filesystem is NTFS, so linux can not write it. How ever I have a friend, who has large enough USB stick memory. If I loan that I think that I should be able copy my disks to images.

You could remount your NTFS drive as RW, but it is -somehow- risky and Windows XP will run checkdisk on loading up if you don't umount it before rebooting.

Or: compress the images and write them back to a 1.44MB floppy!

Nah, better send them on the network to the right spot. How about sending them to your GMail account? Plenty of space

All stories I heard about writing to NTFS from Linux ended with file system corruption. Reading works fine, but don't try writing.

If you have a separate CD reader and writer, you could put the Knoppix disk in the reader and write the images on CD with the writer. K3b is a very good CD burning app for Linux, probably Knoppix has it as well.

First I thought something like using samba to copy files to my other computer, but using gmail account is just simple and great idea! Even if I backup all of my 360KB disks at once it will be less than 50MB of data! Thanx for the tip

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If you have a separate CD reader and writer, you could put the Knoppix disk in the reader and write the images on CD with the writer. K3b is a very good CD burning app for Linux, probably Knoppix has it as well.

Yes, Knoppix has K3b, but I can not boot Knoppix from another drive, it will not find correct display drivers for my video card, if I do that.

Hmm... It seems, that my PC drive reads my dusty disks better than MSX, but still I have a problem with bad sectors. Linux also gives me input/output error and does not finnish the job. Any ideas?

THe disk is probably too damaged?
Maybe you can use ddrescue on linux or some other low level tool (on Amiga?)

Thanx, I'll try ddrescue. In this case, I don't care if part of the data is damaged, but it would be nice, if I could find a program, that finishes the task of making disk image even if there are errors. (No matter PC or MSX) If that really does not exist, I think, I'll have to write one...

I have an USB floppy disk drive that turns crazy when I insert a single sided disk on it. It successfully lists the root directory, but when I try to read a file, I obtain wrong data . And all of this is happening on the MSX... so maybe the problems with these disks are not on the PC operating systems (BTW a Macintosh user reported me to have the same problem) but in the modern disk drives.

Well, this is exactly same, what happens, when you insert 360KB disk to MS-DOS PC. I remember, that this was really a pain for me, when I got a brand new 386 computer from my uncle. The problem is not in the drive, it is just not addressed correctly.

First 9 sectors works same way in 720KB disk and 360KB disk, so this is why you can see the directory. After this the reading goes to bottom side in 720KB disk and this is where the problem comes. To read 360KB disk sectors 9-17 with 720KB addressing, you need to ask for sectors 18-27. When you address drive using Sector, Head and Track this problem is automaticly gone, but when you use USB , IDE etc, you address it with logical sectors, that are unfortunately not calculated separate way for 360KB disks.

Calculating of Logical sectors for 720KB disks: Lsec=sector+head*9+track*18
Calculating of Logical sectors for 360KB disks: Lsec=sector+track*9

Sector=0-8
track=0-79
head=0 (upper side) / 1 (lower side)

Ps. Too bad to hear, that modern Machintosh computers have imported PC problems. 360KB disks work fine with old Mac computers.