Amiga formatted zip disks via USB zip drive in WinUAE?

I was hoping this would be as easy as checking "Add PC drives at startup" and browsing to the drive with an Amiga formatted zip disk in it, but the drive just makes an unhappy noise and nothing happens. I'm using AmigaInABox r10c with the "Games" configuration.

I just want to get the data off these disks (if they're even still readable) or attempt to repair them if they aren't. I looked into having them recovered professionally, but a disk recovery service I asked with said it would cost over a thousand dollars to get the data off, and I just don't have that kind of cash laying around.

I'd use the old Amiga 1200 to get the data off, but it apparently stopped working while in storage for the past 7 or 8 years. No lights, nothing.

So here's REALLY hoping I can get to them through WinUAE. Anybody have any ideas on what might help?

These disks are of high sentimental value. One of them has the only backup of my deceased brother's hard drive on it. He'd programmed games for Dark Unicorn Productions, and I'd like to release some of his stuff into the public domain. I can't even FIND a non-demo copy of "It's the Pits" on the net.

EDIT: I tried adding the drive through "Add Hard Drive..." It did show up in the list. I tried to create a hard disk image, but I get "Hard drive image file creation failed. Error code 4:0."

If I click Add hard drive instead of Create hard disk image file, the zip drive shows up in the list of Devices with an X next to it, instead of a *. The Volume is n/a and the Block size is 0. If I reset the emulation, it does not show up on the desktop.

[Jope]

Use DD in Linux or Windows to make dumps of the disks and then start working from those. Check out what is in the beginning with a hex editor.. If the filesystem starts right away, you can try adding the images as a normal hdf.

http://www.chrysocome.net/dd


Edit: bad advice below, I mistakenly remebered they had a physical write protect tab when I wrote this.
Write protect your zip disks before doing anything to them if you haven't done this several times before (and it doesn't hurt even then).

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by planetidiot

EDIT: I tried adding the drive through "Add Hard Drive..." It did show up in the list. I tried to create a hard disk image, but I get "Hard drive image file creation failed. Error code 4:0."

Faulty drive or disk? Image creation is direct block copy (same as DD does), it should "never" fail.

Check winuaebootlog.txt for more information. (after selecting the drive using "Add Harddrive" dialog)

[thomas]

the drive just makes an unhappy noise

The disks most probably died. I have some ZIP disks which layed in storage for not more than four years and they all died. ZIP is a very bad medium in my experience.

I tried to create a hard disk image, but I get "Hard drive image file creation failed. Error code 4:0."

Try another image-creation program which ignores read errors.

a disk recovery service I asked with said it would cost over a thousand dollars to get the data off

Ask another sevice. Disk recovery is very expensive (usually about $100 per 100MB), but a thousand dollars is far too much. Tell them, you don't need a file recovery but only a block image of the disk. You can do the file recovery yourself, for example with DiskSalv. Recovering an Amiga file system professionally will bloat the costs, if possible at all.

[matthew]

Originally Posted by planetidiot

...I was hoping this would be as easy as checking "Add PC drives at startup" and browsing to the drive with an Amiga formatted zip disk in it, but the drive just makes an unhappy noise and nothing happens...

You're probably hearing the 'Click of death'.

[mark_k]

Originally Posted by Jope

Use DD in Linux or Windows to make dumps of the disks and then start working from those. Check out what is in the beginning with a hex editor.. If the filesystem starts right away, you can try adding the images as a normal hdf.

http://www.chrysocome.net/dd

Write protect your zip disks before doing anything to them if you haven't done this several times before (and it doesn't hurt even then).

I'd second that. Definitely create image files of the disks (if possible) rather than risk writing to them accidentally or on purpose. (Though since Zip disks don't have a hardware write protect tab, write-protecting them does involve writing to the disk!)

For creating disk images, a good solution is to use Helix, a bootable Linux CD designed for forensics use. It's guaranteed not to write to the disk. You can get that from http://www.e-fense.com/helix/

There are utilities for reading disks with bad sectors. I think sg_dd is one, it's probably on the Helix CD. Most normal "dd" programs abort as soon as a bad sector is encountered, so they are not suitable if there are any bad/unreadable sectors on the disk.

I've had good results recovering data from Zip disks using the Helix CD and sg_dd. It can even sometimes partly recover bad/unreadable sectors (it uses the SCSI READ LONG command).

[darkuni]

Originally Posted by planetidiot

These disks are of high sentimental value. One of them has the only backup of my deceased brother's hard drive on it. He'd programmed games for Dark Unicorn Productions, and I'd like to release some of his stuff into the public domain. I can't even FIND a non-demo copy of "It's the Pits" on the net.

I probably still have this SOMEWHERE. If the floppy disk is still good.

I remember his ASM screen wipe we used in the DUP commercial demo.

Sigh ... so long ago.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by darkuni

I probably still have this SOMEWHERE. If the floppy disk is still good.

I remember his ASM screen wipe we used in the DUP commercial demo.

Sigh ... so long ago.

Go darkuni; go!!!

...who says new members only attracted by my massive project won't contribute / stick around?

[Jope]

Originally Posted by mark_k

(Though since Zip disks don't have a hardware write protect tab, write-protecting them does involve writing to the disk!)

A piece of masking tape over the reflector under the disk serves as the write protect, as far as I remember?

Ah, should have googled before posting. Nah, that's just to tell the drive it's a genuine zip disk.