Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: philtomo on June 01, 2007, 03:41:23 PM
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Hi,
iv just recently bought an amiga 600 with loads of my old favourite games on, im just worried that being floppy disks that they will become unreadable (like most floppies do these days)
what is the best and/or easiest way of backing up my collection?
would it be a case of buying another floppy disk drive? and perfroming a clone between the two drives?
i know ages ago you could use software called x-copy?
any feedback would be grateful
cheers
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X-Copy might copy some of them, but not all. Best bet is to install them to hard disk with WHDLoad.
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moto
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thanks for your quick reply,
so i would copy the disk content to my hard dsik using "whdload" then how would i copy them back if the game became faulty?
is it an easy process
(sorry new to all this)
cheers
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Ahh, well WHDLoad patches the disk image it makes so it can run from HDD. You can't really write them back to disk. If you install them with WHDLoad then you would run them from Hard Disk and then store your disks safely.
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moto
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no, you need DMS
or nowadays maybe you should use TSgui
if games are originals and heavily protected you cannot create 1:1 copies.
you don't need another drive for diskette copying, its done via RAM. I'd suggest you also try D-Copy, its good alternative to X-Copy.
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orange wrote:
no, you need DMS
As long as the disk is not copy protected.
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moto
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would it be a case of buying another floppy disk drive? and perfroming a clone between the two drives?
When using two drives myself I also connect a gadget called a Syncro Express by Datel Electronics between the Amiga and the external floppy drive. I've never found a disk that it won't backup for me :-)
(http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o164/Cyberstorm604e/Syncro.jpg)
Doubler is also pretty good for backing up your disks and can use just the one drive to do it. But as moto says they must not be copy protected :-)
(http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o164/Cyberstorm604e/Doubler.jpg)
As orange says some of your disks may turn into DMS files. Packmaster is one program you could use for those :-)
(http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o164/Cyberstorm604e/Packmaster.jpg)
And then there are ADF files too. ADF-Blitzer is dead easy to use as basically you just click on READ to create an ADF file of the floppy disk in the drive, or WRITE to unpack an ADF file onto a floppy disk :-)
(http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o164/Cyberstorm604e/ADF.jpg)
Indeed the suggested WHDLoad in posts above is probably the best way of *preserving* your disks as theoretically you should never have to use them again. I use the great WHDLoad installers to get my games into hard drive and then compress the whole games drawer as an LHA file. This file can then be moved between your Amigas and unpacked to transfer the game. Hence, there is no need to use your floppy disks :pint:
A4000 Mad
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@philtomo
you could also try (if you have a valuable collection, and want floppy-copies) buying a catweasel controller for your pc/amiga.
the catweasel controller is like a super-floppydrive wich has very good reading algorithms that can read disks that don't copy well in other drives (this isn't guaranteed ofcourse).
what you end up with is the contents or an image of your contents on your pc hdd or on your amiga (then to be transfered to another floppy, in your case).
the catweasel is an expensive solution though, but it's main purpose is copying any disk from the amiga to the pc or vice versa.
for the controller you would need a standard pc-floppydrive.
taken from the seller's site:
"Sophisticated error correction algorithms enable you to read otherwise unreadable disks. In other words, you have an excellent chance to read your formally unreadable floppy disks."
it can also provide for using the controller with your amiga, with the same abilities, it's supposed to be up to 2.6x faster than standard amigafloppydrives and makes you able to use hd floppies with the amiga.
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thanks for the great reply there mate,
how easy is it to get hold of a copy of Syncro Express?because all i basically want to do is have another copy of my original game. so probably just copying them from a single floppy disk drive would be the best idea
is this the best program to use (the way i want), and do you know where i could get hold of a copy?
cheers
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Err... Syncro Express is hardware as well as software!
- Ali
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InTheSand wrote:
Err... Syncro Express is hardware as well as software!
- Ali
as you will see from my previous posts, i am new to this, hence the newbie questions, so thanks for the informative post!!!.....
anyway..
back to my question........
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philtomo wrote:
how easy is it to get hold of a copy of Syncro Express?
Difficult I should imagine, but I've sent you a PM with the e-mail address of someone who had one for sale quite recently :-)
A4000 Mad
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You could use the new EasyADF v1.6 (http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=440) for archiving Amiga disks
One of the new features is that you can make EasyADF into an AppIcon on the Workbench and you can simply drop LHA, LZX, ADF, ZIP files onto the icon. They automatically uncompress.
(http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/images/easyadf.jpg)
(http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/images/easyadf2.jpg)
(http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/images/easyadf3.jpg)
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Wanted:
Will pay good price for Synchro Express or other similar device that will duplicate copy protected Amiga disks, or convert them to ADF files.
Reply via PMail here.
Thanks
AmigaDave
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Gotta love AOrg and the helpful people here:)
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amigakid wrote:
Gotta love AOrg and the helpful people here:)
Absolutely!!!
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@amigakit
In fairness it should be pointed out that it can only read/write regular disk, not copy protected ones.
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Back to the copy protection wars... One of the hardware/software tools is best, such as Syncro Express is your best bet.
Easier to find, and good for older games is Maverick. It is an old parameter copier.
WHDload may be your best all around choice though. It makes the games MUCH better to use with faster loading/updating times (and sometimes even new features!), and allowing you to store your disks safely away.
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It seems that what you want to do is to back up your disks to images on your hard disk, so when your disk goes bad, you can write the image back again. You can indeed use Synchro Express and X-Copy Pro and other programs to copy from disk to disk but what happens when you run out of disks...? Try finding some new DS DD disks these days... and the old ones are just as unreliable as the disks you're trying to back up. Plus a lot of disks still won't copy.
You can use ADF tools to back up non-copy protected disks, but that leaves 95% of all games that you can't image. ADF files do not contain enough information for copy protected disks.
For some better news, though, I suggest you take a look at http://www.softpres.org/ as what you want to do is exactly what these guys are doing. However, you can't yet use their images yourself. I'm not sure exactly how useful it'll be to you therefore... but it does mean the data on your precious disks is safely stored somewhere.
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spirantho wrote:
I'm not sure exactly how useful it'll be to you therefore... but it does mean the data on your precious disks is safely stored somewhere.
:lol: :lol: :lol:
I sure am glad all gold bars are *safe* somewhere, like in West Point, it doesn't matter if they aren't useful to me
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The most famous hardware floppy sync device is the Cyclone, which worked with X-Copy. I think it was Amiga Retro Experience on eBay a few days ago who had one in perfect condition, with a Boxed version of X-Copy.
However, they reguarly appear on eBay, like:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Amiga-Blitz-External-Floppy-Drive-Cyclone-Dongle_W0QQitemZ160122029701QQihZ006QQcategoryZ98928QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
This one does not appear to have any plastic around the board, so you would have to be careful not to drop any metal onto it or say goodbye to your Amiga!
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Another:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230138766701&indexURL=0&photoDisplayType=2#ebayphotohosting
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I have Synchro Express and Super Card Ami II and they both work great. BUT you have to have a perfect set of drives for them to work. I have a few external drives: A 1010, CA-880 and RockTech drive and only the 1010 works to copy the disks. You will also need an external drive for the hardware copiers. The nice thing is these will copy virtually every disk! I heard they can also copy Dragons Lair but I have not tried...
I recently got a cyclone and it did not work to good for me!
I got them all from ebay btw...
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Howdy, Phil.
I was always able to copy copy-protected software with programs like Renegade, x-copy, Marauder and Raw Copy. None appear on aminet, unfortunately. There may be other pd copy software.
Hey everybody, I have a Datel box. Are you folks telling me that it is actually worth something? It is the game breaker which was part of a haul I made several years ago off an old gamer. Is that what you're talking about? It is buried under an amigalanche in my closet. Is it worth digging out? I should probably send my cat companion Ra in first to see if there were any survivors.
be seeing you
6
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hmmmhmmmmmmmmhmmmmmmmhmmmmmm
Welcome, Phil.
To 6: You're not sending me in there.
Ra
hmmmmmmmmmhmmmmmmmmmhmmmmmmm