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How do I dump an image back to a floppy disk?

Applies to: RIDE 1.7.7 and later

1. Click on Disk → Open to open the image to dump to a real floppy disk.
2. Click on Disk → Dump to show the Dump to destination dialog.

   

   • Click on the Destination button (Alt+D) to show a classical Save file dialog. Don't click on the floppy drive icons! Instead, click on the Access real devices on this computer shown at the bottom of the dialog.

     

   • The application tries to find all supported devices connected locally to the computer (which may take a while), and lists them in the Real devices dialog, with the most recently used device pre-selected.

     

   • Confirm the selection by the OK button.

3. The Dump to destination dialog now shows the device you chose, and has been preset to dump the whole image to a disk. If the DOS has been recognized by the application, you usually at this moment may press the Dump button. However, there still may be settings to revise, especially if the DOS has not been recognized.

   

• Confirm the value set in the Medium combo-box (Alt+M). If it doesn't specify the right floppy type, change it to comply with the floppy inserted in the drive. Such inconsistency may occur, for instance, if the DOS has not been recognized.
• Specify the range of Cylinders to dump to the image (Alt+F, and Alt+T, respectively). You usually may leave the default values (whole floppy will be dumped).
• If the destination floppy has already been formatted to the target geometry (for instance, you are about to dump a TR-DOS image to a floppy which you know has previously been formatted in Betadisk drive), you can tick the Medium already formatted checkbox (Alt+U).
  • If unticked, each track will be formatted. This should be the default if the status of the floppy is unknown (and you don't want to find out).
  • If ticked and the medium is correctly formatted, only missing or corrupted tracks will be reformatted, thus speeding up the dumping.
  • If ticked and the medium is not correctly formatted, the dumping will perform slower.
• The Encoding (Alt+E) specifies the method used for data representation in the target disk. This combo-box currently always contains just a single option (so you can safely ignore it at the moment), however, more DOSes and encodings are to come, hence please stay tuned.
• The Gap3 value (Alt+G) represents the inter-sector gap, and it's usually not necessary to change it. Some game producers liked to decrease this value to accommodate an extra sector that normally would not fit in the track (sometimes as part of their copy-protection, e.g. Titus the Fox game by Titus Interactive). If you stumble upon a track that is apparently longer than common tracks, try to decrease this value. The default for this value derives from recognized DOS, or follows the IBM recommendation if DOS hasn't been recognized.

  

• The Filler Byte (Alt+B) determines the value that will be used as the initial content of fresh formatted sectors. You usually may leave the default.
• The Do full track analysis checkbox (Alt+A) subjects each track in currently open disk to low-level timing analysis. This analysis consists of (1) search for non-formatted areas, (2) search for data in gaps, and (3) search for fuzzy regions in data. This checkbox is enabled (and ticked by default) if the currently opened container provides such low-level information (e.g. KryoFlux Stream files or KryoFlux device itself). This checkbox is enabled even if the target container actually doesn't store the low-level information – with this option ticked during dumping to a less featured container (e.g. raw-data *.IMA), you can evaluate on-the-fly which uncommon information, if any, you are about to lose in the less featured container (for instance, you may lose significant data in a gap as part of a copy-protection).
• The Show report when done checkbox (Alt+R) instructs the application to show a summary at the end of the dump. Included in the report is a summary of what errors arose and a summary of the full track low-level analysis (Alt+A).
• If observing delays in accessing the floppy drive (e.g. in a highly concurrent environment), be sure to have the Real-time thread priority check-box (Alt+P) ticked.
• Press the Dump button.
4. This step depends on the device you selected in the Real devices dialog:
   • Internal PC floppy drive (click to unfold)
     1. A FDD access options dialog pops up. Values in the dialog have been optimally preset by the application to generally access a floppy. However, you may find useful to override some settings:
        • The following two checkboxes are for working with 40-track floppies: 40-track drive (Alt+4) when ticked specifies that the drive's nominal cylinder count is 40 (and going beyond this limit may destroy the drive), and Double track distance (Alt+D) when ticked specifies if an 80-track drive should be used as a 40-track drive. A warning sign ▲ may wrap both of these checkboxes to indicate potential inconsistency.
        • Latencies (Alt+C, Alt+B, and ALT+G) are good to have auto-determined by the application if dumping a copy-protected image (follow on-screen instructions for this option). A warning sign ▲ may appear if latencies not determined or outdated.
        • Head calibration which you may turn on for each N-th cylinder to format (Alt+E), or turn it off and prevent head calibration during formatting.
        • Formatted track verification (Alt+V) which is recommended to have turned on.
        • Verification of written data (Alt+W) which is also stronly recommended to have turned on. Verified are not only good data (that they were written well) but also bad or incomplete data (that they were written badly and in full extent).
        • Preference of relative over absolute seeking (Alt+P) which lessens the number of calibrations during dumping of a copy-protected image (see why).

        You may leave the remaining values to their defaults and click on OK.

        

     2. If not done so before, the application suggests to autodetermine the floppy controller latencies. It is recommended to accept the suggestion by clicking on Yes – with correctly set latencies, the application can perform up to twice as fast than with the default values! Clicking on No, you reject the autodetermination this time, and clicking on Cancel makes the application ask no more about the latencies.

        

   • Greaseweazle or KryoFlux (click to unfold)
     1. A Flux device access options dialog pops up. Values in the dialog have been optimally preset by the application to write to a floppy. There are, however, several formatting-related settings that you still might want to revise:

        

        • The following two checkboxes are for working with 40-track floppies: 40-track drive (Alt+4) when ticked specifies that the drive's nominal cylinder count is 40 (and going beyond this limit may destroy the drive), and Double track distance (Alt+D) when ticked specifies if an 80-track drive should be used as a 40-track drive. A warning sign ▲ may wrap both of these checkboxes to indicate potential inconsistency.
        • Flippy disk (Alt+I) indicates that inserted is a two-sided floppy originally used in a single-sided drive (in which it had to be flipped to read the second side). You need to have a modified floppy drive to use this checkbox (see why).
        • You should pay a special attention at the pre-compensation which should be determined by the latest method before attempting to format/modify a floppy (see why). If not determined or outdated for specific floppy type and/or drive, a warning sign ▲ appears next to the link to determine/update it.
        • If working with magnetic signal of copy-unprotected image, you may consider applying Jitter and other corrections (Alt+C) before sending the signal to the device. Clicking on the Settings hyperlink, the Flux corrections dialog pops up. Given a reliable magnetic surface, the combination of corrections and pre-compensation is a key to a successfull writing.

          

        • It is recommended to have Verify formatted/written tracks (Alt+V) turned on. If turned on, all significant parts of each track are verified, including intersector data (if any). Failures in verifying insignificant bits in the track (e.g. non-sector bits, non-data bits, input fuzzy bits, or "no bits" in non-formatted area) are not reported.
        • To skip verification of bad sectors in magnetically unreliable parts of the disk (where verification would fail anyway), untick the Verify sectors marked as bad in FAT (Alt+B) checkbox. Leave this checkbox ticked if working with original disks where bad sectors appear on healthy magnetic surface as part of a copy-protection (e.g. intentionally bad CRC).

        You may leave the remaining values to their defaults and click on OK.

5. A dialog displaying progress of dumping shows up.

   

6. Occasionally during dumping, the Sector read error dialog may pop up, reporting on errors while reading a particular sector. For copy-protected floppies, you may accept the errors (see the Accept button options), otherwise you may want to reattempt reading the sector (the Retry button) or choose one of recovery strategies (the Recover button options).

   

See also

• Why does floppy drive head calibrate so often when dumping an image to a disk?