Alternative to Kryoflux as 3.5" floppy drive

[Katy Rawdon]

Hello everyone,

Our institution is ramping up imaging of 3.5" floppies in our collections, and our trusty old computer with internal 3.5" drive has decided that it would likely retire, permanently. It also, frankly, does not do a good job of reading disks that aren't in pristine condition.

We already have an external Device Side Data 5.25" drive attached to another (newer) computer (which we like well enough, although I don't love that it requires the use of its own proprietary software), and would like to add a good 3.5" drive to that set up, to replace the old computer. We have looked at Kryoflux drive, but the cost for institutional use is high, and there are a few other things we don't love about it. We've occasionally used a regular external 3.5" drive from Staples, but it really doesn't like the older disks... Does anyone use an alternative to Kryoflux that you would recommend, or should we go forth and gather the money for that?

Thanks!

Katy

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Katy Rawdon

Coordinator of Technical Services

Special Collections Research Center

Temple University Libraries

Philadelphia, PA 19122

(215) 204-5250

kra...@temple.edu 

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[Simon Spero]

(make sure that it's not a run of bad disks,  check for warping, and make sure the disk spins)

The big question is what kind of disks you are imaging.
If the bulk formats are 3.5" ms-dos or Mac HD then most drives will work. 

If you need to handle things like 400/800kB Mac floppies, you are pretty much going to have to choose between a middle aged mac, or going  with kryoflux or try to  build your own disc ferret.

If the most at risk disks are the weird ones, then you need to get those done first; otherwise they can wait while you can save up capital. Depending on what sort of deal you can make with Kryoflux it might be possible to get the kit on the tick.

Alternatively, this is the kind of thing that disproportionately affects senior faculty, who
a) are better paid than more junior faculty, 
b) are more likely to have work saved on obsolete media, and
c) are easier to convince that their every word should be immortal.
An appeal for personal donations at a faculty council/ senate should do the trick  law school is also likely to be good hunting grounds ).

If there are only a few oddballs, it might be cheaper to outsource.

Simon.

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[L Snider]

One other thing I can add to what Simon said, and is to look at purchasing both internal and external drives. I have found with my own personal floppies that sometimes one will read the disk and the other won't... I would also try for different ages as well. I have found that older units work better than new ones, but this is just personal experience and it depends on the workings of those drives.

Cheers

Lisa

[Carl Fleischhauer]

This is a non-answer to Katy (forgive me!) but rather another question.  I have been doing my best to understand the options for disk images with floppy or hard drives as the data sources, and in the context of archives rather than, say, legal investigation.  I've just been reading (not "doing") and conclude that there are lots of options, including Kryoflux. My current, seat-of-the-pants conclusion is as follows:

1. The Kryoflux approach begins by making a record of a disk's magnetic flux transitions and outputs what is called a stream file.  In order to get at the digital data carried in the stream file, you execute a second process, applied to the stream file.  Described here: http://www.openplanetsfoundation.org/blogs/2014-06-26-bulk-disk-imaging-and-disk-format-identification-kryoflux. Also the stream format specification http://www.kryoflux.com/download/kryoflux_stream_protocol_rev1.1.pdf and the Kryoflux manualwww.kryoflux.com/download/kryoflux_manual.pdf.

2. Reading these documents led me to think that if you can make a disk image without resorting to Kryoflux, you have a more straightforward path to a disk-image-for-preservation and/or the extraction of wanted files from the source. Thus, if you could use one of the usual imaging tools (FTK Imager or Toolkit, Guyimager or libewf in some other guise, implementations via BitCurator, etc.), you will have a more orderly outcome.  I do see that there is a bit of tug of war over the preferred imaging format to output from the usual imaging tools, with various folks advocating for AFF, AFF4, one of the several flavors of Expert Witness (e.g., SMART, .E01, .Ex01, .L01, and .Lx01), or for other members of the class of disk-image files that are most often called "evidence" or "forensic."  Some commentators are also supportive of the less-well-packaged and uncompressed "raw" options, for which the archetype in the archiving context seems to be .dd.  (I am a little uncertain, but I have come to think of the members of the .dmg and .img families as "raw" as well.)

3.  If the preceding is correct (??), then the use case for Kryoflux seems to be "for problem disks," i.e., disks in formats that are difficult for the usual imaging tools to deal with, and/or damaged disks where the game is as much data recovery as imaging.   My reading suggests that Kryoflux is a kind of back-up, last resort tool for archivists, sometimes a real life-saver.

I'll appreciate hearing from the real experts on this list! 

Carl Fleischhauer, Library of Congress

[Mark A. Matienzo]

Carl, all -

What you've said is partly correct.

A) The strength of the Kryoflux from a hardware and software perspective is its ability to sample magnetic flux transitions. However, the Kryoflux imaging software (DTC) also allows for the ability to decode the flux transitions into a "usable" disk image, given that you know certain facts about the the disk (e.g., the encoding scheme used, track width, etc.). This means you can get a workable "raw" disk image, or one that is containerized in the appropriate format (see C below).

B) The issue is that most "modern" hardware disk controllers - such as those that you find within inexpensive USB floppy drives - lack the ability to read anything other than disks that are encoded in MFM. This is an issue for the reasons that Simon listed out, but the most common problematic formats are double density 400K and 800K Mac floppies given their relative abundance.

C) Disk image formats are a whole other ball of wax. "Raw" is a rough categorization, and strictly speaking there are lots formats of store the actual disk data in a "raw" form inside a wrapper structure.

D) The Kryoflux can indeed understood to be a general purpose tool, but its specialty is its ability to capture the flux transitions at a level where they matter. In some cases this can be for damaged disks, as you suggest. However, the Kryoflux was specifically designed to capture "authentic" disk images of historic commercial software, which in many cases use copy protection measures that exploit physical characteristics of the medium or how flux is detected. 

Mark A. Matienzo <ma...@matienzo.org>

Director of Technology, Digital Public Library of America

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[Porter Olsen]

Hi Katy,

You may also want to check out the SuperCard Pro http://www.cbmstuff.com/proddetail.php?prod=SCP. The makers claim to be able to do much of what the Kryoflux can do (read flux transitions, etc.). However, it's a relatively new device so it doesn't have the depth of support that the Kryoflux does.

Porter

On Thursday, November 20, 2014 10:36:06 AM UTC-5, Katy Rawdon wrote:

[Katy Rawdon]

A belated thanks to everyone for the responses about the Kryoflux and alternatives. It seems like, given the number of disks we've had trouble reading with our "general" external USB 3.5" drive (from Staples), and given that our current old computer with an internal 3.5" drive is on its way to compute heaven, buying a Kryoflux may be the best (although not a cheap) option. I will also look into the SuperCard Pro - but since it's newer, I wonder if it would be better to stick to the Kryoflux.

Thanks again!

Katy

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