Making Disk Image of Copy Protected Floppy

Well, un-writeprotecting it is as simple as putting tape over the holes in the disk. As far as software, I really didn't use pre OS 7 very much, so I can't help you there.

I think Mac128 means they are protected against copying, rather than write-protected.

The only program I've come across is disk-dup-plus, but have not used it myself, so YMMV.

Yes it works perfectly. However, it does require system 6 to make disk images. Any prior system it makes perfect sector copies of protected disks. Which raises the question, what system were disk images introduced with (I did not try 4 & 5)? Anyway, I have made images of protected disks that work perfectly under Mini vMac. Thanks for the feedback ...

For years, I've wanted to have digital "disk image" copies of my old 400k and 800k disks. I've done that for all non-protected disks. But copy protection makes it impossible to image the disks. Copy II Mac only works to copy from floppy to floppy or from floppy to hard disk (not the same as an Image). Perhaps if the Central Point Software people were still in business today, they could develop a solution quickly. Because if they could make Copy II Hard Disk copy a protected floppy's data to an Apple HD20, they surely could get it onto a disk image. But disk images didn't exist in the very early days, and so Central Point never came out with that feature.

Another consideration is that some copy protection is a physical hole or scratch on the floppy itself, which even Copy II cannot handle. To dupe the disk to another floppy in that case, you have to match the hole/scratch! So such disks are totally impossible to make disk images of.

The best solution is for a hacker among us to hack the original code. If you can strip out the original copy protection, you can image the disks all you like! This is the ideal solution, but I myself lack the know-how to do it. However, I often read posts over at 68kMLA about people who want to program for System 6 or 7, so this, in my humble opinion, would be an ideal task! I would even be happy to mail duped floppies to the programmer who would be willing to perform this work!

I appreciate the insight into the physical alteration to the disk, I have never encountered such a disk, much less such a radical protection scheme. However, "DiskDup+" absolutely images copy protected disks that use either code or disk error schemes (i.e. a bad sector that the Mac won't copy but Disk Dupe does since it copies every sector exactly, flaws and all). It might even copy physical flaws in the disk, or their virtual equivalent, but without such a disk I couldn't say for sure. As for code and bad sectors, DiskDup+ does a perfect job of making images. No need to hack it out of the code.

What version of DiskDup+ are you using then? Because I've used one version of it in the past on my copy-protected disks (like SmoothTalker 1.0 and SmoothTalker 2.0, and the resulted images were not usable).

Please also provide a comprehensive listing (if you can) of the protected software that you successfully have "imaged" with DiskDup+. I think that would be very helpful. I myself will then download the version of DiskDup+ you are using (if I can find it) and give it a try on my disks (using my SE/30, booted into 6.0..

Thanks.

Dupped MacServe, Professional Composer, Performer, Macintosh Guided Tour, Music Works, MS Word, off the top of my head.

I also used it with the native operating environments so that was everything from 1.0 to 3.2

Also, something just occurred to me about your SE/30 images. Even though System 6 will read & write 400K MFS disks, you SE/30's doing it with a SuperDrive SWIM chip, which in my experience does an awful job reading and writing from a 400K MFS disk. System software in particular often will not boot when copied with a 1.4MB drive. Either way, I was using 6.0.5 on my Mac Plus, which is why I asked what the minimal system requirement was for disk images (just in case 6.0 won't work).

I've been using this SE/30 to make 400k and 800k disks for a very long time. I've never had a problem. However, it won't work if I boot into any flavor of System 7 and try to make 400k disks. You have to use System 6 to make 400k disks. And yes, my floppy drive is a 1.4MB type, and my SE/30 has the SWIM chip too.

Macintosh Guided Tour and Apple OS disks are not copy protected, so I am not surprised you were able to image those. I've done as much with Disk Copy 4.2. And depending on what version of MS Word you have, it may not be copy-protected either.

I myself have an original MultiPlan disk which I know is copy protected, so I can test that. I can also test my SmoothTalker disks too. But again, what version of DiskDup+ are you using? To make my testing a bit more scientific, I'd like to use the same version you are to ensure we can match that part of the testing equation.

Thanks.

Hello! Can somone share these images of old Mac programs? I am looking for Jam session, PageMaker 1.2 and Bouncing Pepsi Caps, anyway I allready have Jam Session images, but can run only Jam Session Player, and when I try to start the jam session app it alerts me with insert original disk message, so I assume that the floppies were protected. Watch the jam session player on YOuTube I made a clip of and some other old applications.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz6jr3wIHZY

http://www.youtube.com/slomacuser

Guess I wasn't clear enough in my other posting, so I'll repeat it in the body: DiskDup+ version 2.7

Glad to hear you have not had a problem with the SE/30. Most likely the problem lies with the 400K drives as they are even inconsistent between themselves since they rely on their rotation speed control from the Mac. Generally the 1.4MB SWIM drives only contribute to the problem.

As for the copy protected disks, I don't know about newer Guided Tour disks, but the original System .85/Finder 1.0 Guided Tour is most certainly copy protected. Mainly because Apple did not want people to use the system file on that disk which was quite buggy, but System .97 would not run the Tour. I've never tried to image it with Disk Copy 4.2, but you cannot copy it via traditional means.

Trust me I know what copy protected is and Microsoft Word 1.0 is most definitely copy protected. Any program that requires the insertion of a master disk is copy protected.

Whether DiskDup+ works or not is not at issue. It works, I've used it. Your testing would only confirm if it works on certain disks. Certainly the use of DiskDup+ gives most copy-protected users more hope than having a 20 year old program decompiled and stripped of copy protection code. If such a thing were indeed possible, it would have been done back in the day when the software cost $200-$500 a pop.

Sorry, Mac128, but my eyes tend to avoid reading titles and jump to the meat of the post! :-) I appreciate your patience with me in making the version more clear though. Got it this time!

I was not suggesting that Word 1.0 was not copy protected. In fact, I know first hand that version 1.0 is protected. I was simply saying that LATER versions were not copy protected. And by that I mean "around version 3.0 or later." I don't have every single version in my possession, so I can't get more specific than that. But I agree with you that version 1.0 is protected.

I still haven't done the scientific testing yet (it's a busy day today), but what I can say for sure is that DiskDup+ (just as you pointed out) will copy even the bad parts of a disk (which are often the copy protected parts). However, this will not copy all disks. I know this for a fact without even testing (but rest assured I will do some testing though). Why do I say this? Because DiskDup+ incorporates only one of the 4 copying features of CopyIIMac. CopyII has the following methods:

Sector Copy
Bit Copy
Keep Track Lengths
Synchronize Tracks

Sometimes a Bit Copy will do the job. Other times, Sector Copy. Other times a combination of the two. And other times, you need to mix all 4. Copy II comes with a listing of old software and the copy methods required to copy them. Central Point spent a lot of time doing that work for us.

And so, while you may have been lucky in copying some protected disks with DiskDup, it is highly likely that all of those disks could have been duped with CopyII's Sector Copy. But since DiskDup doesn't have any other feature of CopyII, any protected disks that require Bit Copy or Keep Track Lengths or a combination of copy methods, could never be duped by DiskDup!

Here is a discussion I participated in almost two years ago:

http://mac.underdogs.kirit.com/forum.php?forum=1&thread=2937&topic=2

I tried to get an image of the disk Archon. I once owned it years ago, but the disk died and the company who sold it was long gone. I therefore turned to Macintosh Garden for help. But the disk is protected, and the people who owned the disk and tried DiskDup+ were not successful.

If you read through that Macintosh Garden discussion though, some of the guys finalized realized that the only way to copy the disk would be to hack out the protection (as I mentioned in my post above in this thread). However, if you go to page 2 of that discussion, you will see that the self-designated programmer in that thread never finished what he started. Everyone had high hopes, but in the end, the programmer was either not a real programmer or he had a problem with eternal procrastination.

I think the only realistic solution on a programming level would be to write another DiskDup+ disk image application that incorporated the missing copy protection schemes into the program. That seems slightly more realistic than trying to decompile a copy protected program, remove the copy protection code and then re-compile it – And ultimately far more useful for other programs (considering the time involved). For my needs, DiskDup+ worked perfectly and I suspect it will serve the vast majority of traditionally protected disks that use that method. Hope it works for you, nevertheless it was the solution I was looking for and again I thank the forum.