Making Backups

[Hornpipe2]

I'm making ATR images of all my old Atari disks before they die forever. Currently I'm using the MyCopyR 2.1 sector copier from APE_WARP.atr to duplicate disks. It works really well for disks that are still very readable, but it has a few problems:

- it seems to make no attempt to retry reads from ? sectors

- some of my disks cause it to lock up

- it fails to detect 1050 density on some disks, causing the reading to only return the first 3 or 4 segments

 

Can someone recommend a copier that would get around these? I haven't yet tried US Copy but I've read good things - I suppose I'll re-run all my noncopyable disks through that one.

 

Also, are there any tools available for making ATX images of disks? I have a few originals I'd like to preserve properly.

[+CharlieChaplin]

Afaik,

there are at least two versions of MyCopier 2.1 - one is a file version, the other one is a boot version. I do have both versions and afaik only the boot versions allows the option to set enhanced density on or off (the option "auto" doesn `t work). I always set enhanced density to "on", even for Sd or DD disks, the copy program then checks for sector 1040 and if it gets a status ok it assumes the disk is enhanced density, otherwise its SD or DD...

 

I also use the boot version of Mycopier 2.1 very often to copy "shortened" ATR images (created on the PC with MakeATR by Ken Siders or Xboot by Fox) back to real Atari disks... the program reads the unavailable sectors as Errors, but continues reading, when writing the sectors back to a real Atari disk, all Error sectors become empty sectors and thus the transfered image works fine... -Andreas Koch.

[Shawn Jefferson]

You can use the APE ProSystem (www.atarimax.com) tools to make ATR and PRO images of your unprotected and copy-protected disks, respectively. As far as I know the VAPI tools to make ATX images haven't been publically released yet.

[Bunsen]

I'm making ATR images of all my old Atari disks before they die forever. Currently I'm using the MyCopyR 2.1 sector copier from APE_WARP.atr to duplicate disks. It works really well for disks that are still very readable, but it has a few problems:

- it seems to make no attempt to retry reads from ? sectors

- some of my disks cause it to lock up

- it fails to detect 1050 density on some disks, causing the reading to only return the first 3 or 4 segments

 

Can someone recommend a copier that would get around these? I haven't yet tried US Copy but I've read good things - I suppose I'll re-run all my noncopyable disks through that one.

 

Also, are there any tools available for making ATX images of disks? I have a few originals I'd like to preserve properly.

 

My favourite copy program is copymate xe 3.7.

 

- select how many retries

- automatic density detection

- big ramdisk use (320 K)

- high speed able

- more then only 2 drives (d1 and d2) supported

 

I tried a lot copy programs to make atr's. But all others have at least one missing feature.

[Shawn Jefferson]

We always used Copymate 4.4 back when making disk to disk copies was more relevant. Do you know how XE 3.7 differs from 4.4 ?

[MEtalGuy66]

The best, most feature extensive, and most configurable sector copier in existance is Super Sector Copier (SSC.COM) of which the latest version is available free in the REALDOS distribution at http://www.tcpipexpress.com

 

Of course, this is just my oppinion..