Massive disk archiving project - Looking for advice
 

I posted this a while back on A.org, and while I had some suggestions, I am no closer to coming up with a workable solution.


I recently cleaned out a local collector of all his Amiga collection. I only wanted one or two items, but like many he would only sell it as a whole...so I had to take it all. This included a rather massive collection of copied software.

I brought home 6 large pullout drawers full of disks (each probably holding 275 to 300 disks) along with about a dozen smaller 100 disk cases. All told, I am estimating that there is probably about 2500 or so disks in this collection. 99% of it is probably copied software. While there is a good chance a lot of it is in TOSEC, there is also decent chance some of it isn't. I am willing to bet there is a bunch of NTSC stuff in there and for the most part TOSEC is almost all PAL stuff.


So, with that said, I want to work my way through this collection and dump it to images. But, I have questions about the best way to go about this.

1. What format should I dump it to? ADF? IPF? Something else?

2. What hardware should I use? Catweasel? Regular Amiga floppy drive? Kryoflux?



Basically I want to start working on this, but I don't want to get midways through it only to realize that I should have went a different route with the dumping. I want to preserve it, but don't want to do it multiple times to get it right. I plan to upload it to the EAB file server and/or also the Torrent tracker so its out there in folks hands. I just need some starting advice to get the ball rolling.

So...anyone want to donate a Catweasel or Kryoflux? ;)

Originals = IPF, 'backup' disks = ADF.
Really looking forward to see what's in that collection :great Thanks a lot for the offer to upload them to the file server and torrent mate :)

I second that,

Only Originals have to be dumped via the SPS-Tool (A1200 with extra RAM needed) or Kryoflux.
The rest can be dumped with normal ADF-Tools like TsGui or ADF-Blitzer and so on.
Note:
Dumping SPS RAW-Images takes a lot of time. Making ADF's is much faster.

Thanks :great

Yes, please contribute the dumps to the community.
I am always looking for rare versions of games, especially US and/or NTSC versions.

Its sounding like dumping them to ADF is the preferred format.

Should I just do these on my A1200?

I have a spare C= 1011 external drive that I can use to start dumping. Probably end up burning it up..lol.


Whats the best way to verify a good dump? Just dump the disk to .adf with TSGui and have the verify option check marked?

Yes, definitely ADF for copies.
I'd recommend using a KryoFlux board though as it's faster than using an Amiga and the host software checks for many errors Amiga based tools wouldn't.

I have in my collection (collected over the past 20 odd years)
8316 games disks that I have converted to ADF format then archived using LZX
(never liked lha !)

My precious BackUp DVD where I store them contains all these ADF disk images
and 268 ADF PD Compilation Disk Images + 133 Reko Cardsets

I thought it would be illegal to upload/download these type of disk images or
are they no longer copyright. :)

Cheers

Franko

Please upload to EAB Fileserver, except any "ACP&TCP" stuff.
Maybe you can compare your ADF collection against current TOSEC dat, then you could upload the missing sets only.

Well, er... you can't buy most of them anymore (except for used ones). If a game is still sold you aren't allowed to share it here, otherwise... ;) You might want to have a look here Franko : http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=42963 :)

Sorry for sounding ignorant, but what is "TOSEC"...

Cheers :)

Franko

Short answer : http://www.tosecdev.org/index.php/the-project

Ok. Just had a look at the TOSEC sight. So does that mean if I upload to them the ISO image for my DVD, They could sort through the stuff on it and put it on their site for others to erm... view and browse.

It seems like a good idea someone archiving all these brilliant old amiga games. Cos I know that if I kick the bucket my family would just dump all my amiga setups and gigabytes of data in the skip. :)

I don't have the time to work my through 8000 odd disk images again, but if someone else out there like TOSEC are willing to then I would be only to glad to help preserve some of the best games ever written.

Cheers :)

Franko

Thanks for the offer Franko :great You could upload your stuff to the EAB file server (have a look here : http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=43633) and mai or another TOSEC member could grab and sort it then :) Use just need an FTP client to do it. Feel free to ask any questions.

Are they available yet?

If you build one yes (and the software and instructions have been available since February), if you'd like to buy an assembled unit, it will be possible fairly soon.
Since it will have a limited production run, you could pre-register your interest here:
http://www.kryoflux.com/

about how fast can Kryoflux dump an Amiga DD disk?

About 2 minutes per disk with the current software.
Note, that it's the final adf file on your PC, so you don't have to do anything else like transferring it to pc.

thgill: If you're gonna do the dumping using only amiga native hw I'd suggest dms instead of straight adf as you get pretty good compression on the images straight away. I mean as opposed to first adf-ing them and then lha or zipping them. But I must say that kryoflux thingamajig sounds pretty damn awesome.

Franko: Wow! Please share that iso! (:

+1 I can haz romz?

Srsly, I'd love to see what's on there. :D

@Skope

I strongly disagree.
DMS is an outdated format, and can produce more errors. (the infamous errdms readerror)
This was fine back in the BBS-Days for archiving, but nowadays it's pointless, with Terabytes of HD-Space and Gigahertz's of Computing Power.
I did my first Disk-Backups with dms also, just to convert them later to ADF. And had to dump a few again, because of the mentioned errors.
Also the TOSEC project uses ADF's for archiving.
So please use ADF instead, really! Because even thousands of ADF-Diskimages uncompressed fit easily on a 4-8GB CF-Card ;)


@thgill

Use a standard A1200 with TSGui for dumping the "backup" disks.
It takes 40 seconds for one disk, and readerrors are very rare to nil if the disks themselfes are in good shape.
I would use the Kryoflux-Device only for Originals.

just my 2 cents, of course


@Franko

Yes, please Upload your disk-collection to the EAB-Fileserver. The TOSEC Guys will take care of them ;)