HDCopy is a
disk image
A disk image, in computing, is a computer file containing the contents and structure of a disk volume or of an entire data storage device, such as a hard disk drive, tape drive, floppy disk, optical disc, or USB flash drive. A disk image is us ...
application for
floppy disks that runs in
MS-DOS
MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...
. It can copy a floppy on the fly, or by using archives with
IMG img or IMG is an abbreviation for image.
img or IMG may also refer to:
* IMG (company), global sports and media business headquartered in New York City but with its main offices in Cleveland, originally known as the "International Management Group ...
file extension that store the content of the disk with a proprietary file format (whose first three bytes noted in hexadecimal will be FF 18, and its size will be anything).
For the proprietary file format compression can be used or deactivated. The compression algorithm is called "Byte-Run-2-Algorithm" by the author.
[hd-copy.dok - Manual shipped with HD-Copy]
It was written by Oliver Fromme and is distributed as
cardware
Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer ...
.
Do not confuse the ''HD'' in its name with ''hard disk''. HD represents ''high density'' (floppy disks with capacity greater than 1.2 MB).
In the early 90s, when floppy diskettes for PCs were widely used, HDCopy was extremely popular in many places. Its usage started to decline as floppy disks became less widely used.
The last released version of HDCopy is 2.0a. There is also a version 3.0a developed later by a Chinese programmer, which is not to be confused with Fromme's version.
Features
The program can handle a large variety of non-standard formats and in many cases automatically recover bad sectors.
To use these images you may need to restore the image using HDCopy and then create a raw image of it using
RawWrite
A disk image, in computing, is a computer file containing the contents and structure of a disk volume or of an entire data storage device, such as a hard disk drive, tape drive, floppy disk, optical disc, or USB flash drive. A disk image is us ...
,
dd, WinImage, etc. You may also need to use a virtual floppy drive to emulate a floppy drive.
See also
*
Track0
Track0 (pronounced 'track zero') is the area located at the start of a computer disk and is predominantly used to store information regarding the layout of the disk (the partition table) and executable code needed to boot an operating system. Trac ...
*
VGA-Copy
VGA-Copy is an MS-DOS program to copy floppy disks. It is able to read defective floppy disks.
Development
VGA-Copy was created by the German software developer Thomas Mönkemeier. The main code was developed in Turbo Pascal; some low-level ...
References
External links
Free Download of HD-Copy (Archived)*
DOS software
{{storage-software-stub