I have a floppy disk or 2 that I'd like to keep for a long time, and frankly I'm amazed that they've lasted this long. I'd like to make a copy on the hard disk that I can use to recreate the floppy if need be. For CDs they have the ISO format, is there anything similar for floppy disks?
If I were using Linux I'd probably try to use dd to copy all of the disk blocks, but I'm using Windows. Thanks.
If anything ever achieved the status with respect to floppy images that ISO has with respect to CDs, I never heard of it. It's pretty much down to however particular imaging software works, though naturally a straight dd-style image is popular. I'd recommend using the fdimage utility that FreeBSD uses for its install .flp files; at minimum you can be pretty confident you'll always be able to locate it easily for download.
Get a copy of rawrite. It creates an image that can be written back to media using dd (or, of course, rawrite).
(Edit: I know you're under Windows, but I wrote this for completeness)
Real men use cat(1) instead of dd(1) ;-)
cat /dev/fd0 > floppy.img
Remember that under Linux you can always use your floppy image without resorting to fossil media
mkdir /mnt/floppy; mount -oloop floppy.img /mnt/floppy
MagicISO does this flawlessly. There's even a tutorial to show you how easy it is to do. MagicISO is also really handy when it comes to CD/DVD images (as the name implies).
I meant to mention that DF32 has an option to save a "raw" image, that does not have the DFI file header, it's just the sector data, and is mountable in a VM. And I found the XP version does work in Win7, I successfully read a set of install diskettes from 1992, using a USB-connected diskette drives. (Yes I was amazed!) :-) http://mcgintys.net/diskfactory/
I've used DiskFactory32 since the days of Windows 95/NT4. It was a shareware program written by Mark McGinty, but it unfortunately seems to have disappeared from the net. Download links lead you round in circles, and the domain name now tries to sell you CDs and DVDs. I still have an installer for v3, but I don't know if it's legal to post for download. Shout if you think need it and I'll see what I can do.
DiskFactory was a floppy disk imaging utility which created a .DFI (Disk Factory Image) image file of a floppy disk, or you could directly copy disk-to-disk. It was a true sector-based copy and could successfully read passed bad sectors and even physical damage. The only limitation compared to ISO images was that you could not mount a DFI image.
As suggested by David Schmitt, you could always do it via a virtual machine. Most (all?) virtualization tools will allow you to use an image as a virtual floppy disk. Just archive the floppy image once you've copied to it.
On the other hand, I'd don't see the point of archiving floppy images (except perhaps for nostalgic reasons) since floppy disks themselves are quickly becoming history. See this article on Ars Technica. Surely the contents are sufficient?
