[Multibooter]

I have been fiddling around, on and off, with LS-120 drives during the past 2 years. They are amazing devices of an age gone by. Actually I got my first LS-120 drive in 2003, but I had rarely used it until 2009, when I archived my regular floppy disks http://www.msfn.org/...ss-under-win98/

In this topic I will share, with other members of this forum, some of my experience with LS-120 drives. Portions of my postings in this topic, especially my experimentations, may fall into the realm of the esoteric, in the sense of: private, not-intended-for-publication. So for more information in some matters you may wish to contact me by PM.

Here some points I may eventually cover:
- What can an LS-120 drive be used for in 2011?
- Toolbox (good LS-120 software and hardware)
- The awful quality of LS-120 drives: Dead and dying drives
- The awful quality of LS-120 disks: Destined to die
- Formatting software for LS-120 drives
- Review of LS-120 drives (Parallel, PCMCIA, USB, ATAPI)
- LS-120 drives under DOS
- Manufacturer-provided USB/PCMCIA drivers of LS-120 drives vs. nusb/Microsoft-provided drivers under Win98
- Only with DOS or Win9x: What canNOT be done under WinXP?
- Creating and restoring images of LS-120 disks
- Can bulk-erased LS-120 disks be reformatted?
- Secured LS-120 disks
- Esoteric: UDF formatted 720kB and 1.44MB floppy disks
- Esoteric: UDF formatted LS-120 disks
- Esoteric: Forensic software and UDF formatted LS-120 disks
- LS-240 drives

TOOLBOX
1) Imation SuperDisk USB for Mac Drive, Model No.SD USB M3
- best choice as 1st LS-120 drive, is fast, works fine under Win98 and WinXP, requires a power supply brick, works fine with 720KB and 1.44MB floppies
- best choice as a regular external floppy drive for computers which don't have a built-in 1.44MB floppy drive
- best choice as a 2nd floppy drive, e.g. for making binary compares, etc. of 2 floppies, as with Beyond Compare

2) Imation Model No.11795 Parallel Port Drive ("old parallel, no dongle drive")

3) Modded Imation SD 120 PPD2 ("new parallel, with dongle")
More info about these 3 drives is in posting #88 http://www.msfn.org/...post__p__976819

4) GRDuw v4.1.17
a unique and highly recommended general tool for removable media (regular floppies, LS-120 disks, Iomega zip and jaz). For Win9x only, does not work under WinXP
- is the only software which can create an image file of a FAT-formatted LS-120 disk and write the image back to an LS-120 disk
- to have a rough indication of the quality of regular 720KB/1.44MB floppies and LS-120 disks
- is my preferred tool for formatting regular floppies and LS-120 disks

5) Imation 3.5" Dry Head Cleaning Disk (SuperDisk, 2HD, 2DD Compatible), reorder No. 51122 41066, hard to find
apparently the only cleaning disk approved for LS-120 drives, maybe other cleaning disks kill the drive

6) Matsus***a SuperDisk Utility ("SuperDisk Device Driver & Utility")
- contains Format Utility for SuperDisk:
-- to format some LS-120 disks, which other LS-120 formatting tools cannot re-format, e.g. to format UDF formatted LS-120 disks back to FAT16
-- to format LS-240 diskettes, which no other software can (requires an LS-240 drive)
- contains SuperWriter32 v2.03 (to format, read und write on LS-240 drives 1.44 floppy disks formatted to 32MB)
- can be downloaded from https://p3.support.p...E0001&fid=17647

7) WinHex v12.8-SR 10
- to create image files of LS-120 diskettes
- when repairing bad LS-120 diskettes: to transfer the first sector from the image of a good LS-120 diskette onto a demagnetized and down-formatted LKS-120 diskette

8) Video cassette bulk eraser:
- to repair bad LS-120 diskettes. Maybe 40% of the LS-120 diskettes around are bad.
First demagnetize the bad LS-120 diskette with a video cassette bulk eraser, then re-initialize and re-format it (see posting #83)

9) Cubig USB floppy bridge inside the Buslink USB floppy drive, hard to find
- with this USB floppy bridge all my regular floppy drives were able to down-format de-magnetized LS-120 diskettes to 720KB (see posting #92 http://www.msfn.org/...post__p__977391)
- also as a tool to quickly test many regular floppy disk drives

10) a .ima image file (created with GRDuw) of a virgin LS-120 disk, zipped up as a small .rar file
- to full-format LS-120 disks, with identical disk SNs etc, by writing the image to disk, instead of normal formatting

11) VoptXP v7.22 to display the actual read speed of a particular LS-120 drive, obtained by reading large blocks of data over the entire disk surface
-> select drive letter -> Status -> Drive test:
- example values: Accurite LS-120 PCMCIA under Win98: 0.40 MB/second; Imation SuperDisk USB for Mac Drive, Model No. SD USB M3: 0.56 MB/second

12) ScramDisk 3.01r3c to create Scramdisk formatted container files under Win98, accessible under Win98 and WinXP with DriveCrypt v3.03b, under Linux with ScramDisk for Linux. The Scarmdisk container format is open source. ScramDisk 3.01r3c does not work with WinXP. Scramdisk container files may be located on LS-120 diskettes. Cannot create NTFS-formatted container files. Needed to create Scramdisk container files, DriveCrypt 3.03b cannot create Scramdisk container files. Easy to use, no steep learning curve.

13) DriveCrypt 3.03b is the last version of DriveCrypt for Win98SE. DriveCrypt 3.03b can be used to mount and work with Scramdisk container files under both Win98SE and WinXP. Scramdisk container files may be located on LS-120 diskettes. Easy to use, no steep learning curve.

NOTE: The recommendations are only for the specic model numbers or version numbers indicated, other model or version numbers may or may not be recommendable

REMOVED FROM TOOLBOX
1) removed because of outdated encryption method 26-Jun-2011
a .ima image file (created with GRDuw) of a virgin Imation 120MB Disk with Secured Encryption Technology, which is very hard to find, zipped up as a small .rar file
- info: http://web.archive.o...s/ss_dk_se.html
- writing the image onto a regular LS-120 disk converts a regular disk into a disk "with Secured Encryption Technology" (copyright laws must not be infringed)
- older versions of this Secured Disk (for Win95) contain SuperDisk Secured v2.2 NA, which is displayed in the Win98 Add/Remove list as "Imation SuperDisk Secured Diskette"
- the install-to of this software contains Secured.exe, Copyright 1998 Micah Development Corporation, v2.1.0.0, timestamp 23-Apr-1998
- there is possibly also a newer WinNT-compatible v3.0, but I don't have it http://web.archive.o...233,216,00.html

 HeartlandCabin2481webgraphicsconstruction1.gif (3.25K)
Number of downloads: 1

THE MOST IMPORTANT POSTINGS:
Review of external LS-120 drives, posting #88 http://www.msfn.org/...post__p__976819
How to re-initialize a demagnetized (= bulk-erased) LS-120 diskette, posting #84 http://www.msfn.org/...post__p__974102

INDEX - By Subject
UDF formatted LS-120 diskettes: postings 22-28
SuperDisk Secured Diskettes: postings 25-28

INDEX of Postings
A) Low-level formatting of bulk-erased LS-120 diskettes:
#2 Bulk-erasing LS-120 floppies
#3 extracting FMTLS120.EXE with Universal Extractor 1.6, continued into #4
#4 to #7 FMTLS120.EXE
#7 Details of the LS-120 diskette format
#8 to #9 ANADISK and FDFORMAT
#10, #12 WinHex
#11 GRDuw
#13 Ghost v11.0.2
#14 to #15 BIOS settings
#16 WinHex and GRDuw
#18 Linux
#19 to #21 WinHex

#24 UDF formatted LS-120 disks [esoteric]

B ) SuperDisk Secured Diskettes
#25 UDF formatted LS-120 SuperDisk Secured Diskettes [esoteric]
#26 Mounting the UDF formatted LS-120 SuperDisk Secured Diskette [esoteric]
#27 Working with the UDF formatted LS-120 SuperDisk Secured Diskette [esoteric]
#28 LS-120 SuperDisk Secured Diskette formatted in a version higher than 1.02 [esoteric]
#28 Use of UDF formatted LS-120 diskettes to hide data?

C) Alternatives to SuperDisk Secured Diskettes (better encryption)
#29 Paragon Encrypted Disk 4.0
#30 Paragon Encrypted Disk 3.02
#30 "Partitioning" UDF media
#31 TrueCrypt 1.0 and Shutdown problem of Truecrypt v1.0
#32 ScramDisk v3.01r3c
#33 A flood of container formats
#33 Multi-booting with virtual encrypted disks (Scramdisk and TrueCrypt container formats)
#34 Shutdown problem of encrypted virtual disk software under Windows 98SE (TrueCrypt 1.0, E4M v2.02a, DriveCrypt v4.6)
#35 DriveCrypt v3.03b
#36 Scramdisk container files > 2GB under Win98
#36 ScarmDisk NT v3.02A has problems with NTFS formatted Scramdisk containers under WinXP

D) Iomega zip and LS-120 in general
#37 to #39 Iomega zip vs LS-120
#39 LS-120 and zip drives - the twain don't meet
#39 LS-120 drives are the worst pieces of computer junk
#39 Uses of LS-120 drives today

#40 MS-DOS compatibility

#41 to #42 Formatting LS-240 diskettes (FAT16 and UDF)
#43 Bootable LS-120 diskettes
#43 LS-240 diskettes - Disk Information
#44 LS-120 diskettes - Disk Information

E) FD32MB format: 1.44MB floppy disk formatted to 32MB
#45 1.44MB floppy disk formatted to 32MB - Disk Information
#46 1.44MB floppy disk formatted to 32MB - Sector 0
#46 Creating, modifying and restoring an image file of a 32MB floppy
#47 to #49, #51 32MB format is only for LS-240 drives
#50 32MB-formatted floppy in a regular floppy disk drive and in an LS-120 drive
#52 Review of LS-240 drive
#53 FD32MB format
#54 Other LS-240 makes?

#55 Postings here were split off into a separate topic "On Bootable CD's Floppy Emulation"
#56 to #57 32MB-formatted floppy in a regular floppy disk drive
#58 32MB floppy disk format
#59 "Burning" a 32MB floppy disk
#60 to #61 32MB formatted floppy disks - Bad sectors
#62 32MB formatted floppy disks - CanNOT repair bad sectors
#63 Documentation of 32MB formatting

#64 The Que! SuperDisk LS-240 USB drive

F) Using the LS-120/240 drive for odd-formatted floppy disk (Win98 and WinXP)
#65 to #66 Using 720KB floppy disks under WinXP
#67 Tools to format 720KB floppies under WinXP
#68 Old floppy disk formats (360KB, 160KB) under WinXP
#69 3.5" floppy disks formatted to 1.2MB under WinXP
#70 to #71 Format720 under WinXP

#71 Searching for a program to low-level format LS-120/240 diskettes

#72 to #76 moving postings from the "garage sale" topic to this LS-120 topic (are now postings #2 to #21 in this topic)

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 22 September 2011 - 09:10 AM

[Multibooter]

Bulk erasing LS-120 floppies
After having bulk erased regular 1.44MB floppies with this Bulk Tape Eraser, and successfully reformatted the floppies, I proceeded to bulk erase a 120MB LS-120 floppy disk. Unfortunately I was not able to re-format it again

I have 4 formatting tools for LS-120 disks:
1) GRDuw v4.1.17, after trying for a long time, terminated with the message "Unrecognized Media", with a black screen in between. BTW WinImage cannot format LS-120 disks.

2) MS Format (right-click on A: in My Computer) eventually displays the err msg: "Windows detected a problem in the area of the disk where the system files were being copied".

3) The Matsh**ta DOS driver, which allows to format a LS-120 disk with the DOS Format command under DOS 7.1. This DOS driver can be downloaded via webarchive/Imation from http://web.archive.o...river_vers1.EXE This driver version seems to be the most recent one and works Ok under DOS 7.1. It consists of Atapimgr.sys (13,545 bytes, 27-Jul-1998, is ATAPI Device Manager Version 2.04.000) and of Mkels120.sys (14,540 bytes, 5-Aug-1998, is SuperDisk Device Driver Version 2.01 for ASPI).

Unfortunately, when I tried to format the bulk-erased LS-120 floppy under DOS, I got the error msg: "Unable to write BOOT" and formatting terminated.

BTW, drivers and format utilities for LS-120 drives (USB, ATAPI and parallel) can be downloaded here: http://web.archive.o...sk_drivers.html It's a little treasure. A LS-120 drive is a must for anybody who has old 1.44MB floppies which may have become unreadable with a regular floppy drive. I was able to archive many otherwise unreadable floppies with a LS-120 drive.

4) SuperWriter32 v.2.03, which installs 2 programs, SuperWriter32 (to write 32MB of data on a regular 1.44MB floppy, with an LS-240 drive) and the SuperDisk FormatUtility for Windows98/ WindowsMe v1.50. It contains the most recent version of Mkelsfmt.exe [17-Feb-2001] which I could find. Also, this program is specifically for Win98/ME, while all other earlier versions of the SuperDisk FormatUtility seem to be for Win95.

SuperWriter32 v.2.03 can be downloaded from
https://p3.support.p...E0001&fid=17647 and the referring page is http://panasonic.jp/...load/index.html

Unfortunately SuperWriter32 v.2.03 could not format the bulk-erased LS-120 disk either. In the window FormatUtility for SuperDisk the drop down window Capacity was blank, nothing could be selected, and then "Error message. Failed formatting. This disk type is different from it you want. Please set a correct type disk"

Bulk-erased LS-120 floppies apparently need a low-level formatting/initialization, before formatting with one of the above tools. There is possibly such a low-level formatting program with the name FMTLS120.EXE contained in the installers sp9090.exe http://h20000.www2.h...39&mode=4&idx=2 and sp9101.exe ftp://ftp.compaq.com...9500/sp9101.exe FMTLS120.EXE was mentioned in http://forums11.itrc...threadId=162751

Low-level formatting of LS-120 disks may be useful, several of my disks have all on a sudden become bad, especially after my experiments with formating as UDF. Maybe existing LS-120 disks need some refreshing, the last LS-120 disks were produced in 2003, and they are getting scarcer, especially new ones.

I don't know how to extract FMTLS120.EXE from sp9101.exe and sp9090.exe The installer just stops in the middle of the installation. Any HELP?

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 25 May 2011 - 12:44 AM

[dencorso]

Multibooter, on 25 May 2011 - 12:33 AM, said:

I don't know how to extract FMTLS120.EXE from sp9101.exe and sp9090.exe The installer just stops in the middle of the installation. Any HELP?

Yes. On XP, use the Universal Extractor 1.61 (or gora's unofficial 1.62) and it'll extract the exe. Then rename DATA.Z to DATA.CAB and use the Universal Extractor again.

Later edit: They are the selfsame pack (just different languages)!

Quote

SP9090.EXE ftp://ftp.compaq.com...9500/sp9090.exe 728K January 26, 1998
TITLE: Armada DOS Real Mode Support for Windows 95/98
VERSION: 2.00 Rev D
LANGUAGE: US English
OS: Microsoft Windows 95 Microsoft Windows 98
SUPERSEDES: N/A

SP9101.EXE ftp://ftp.compaq.com...9500/sp9101.exe 732K January 26, 1998
TITLE: Armada DOS Real Mode Support for Windows 95/98
VERSION: 2.00 Rev D
LANGUAGE: Portuguese
OS: Microsoft Windows 95 Microsoft Windows 98
SUPERSEDES: N/A

[Multibooter]

dencorso, on 25 May 2011 - 12:56 AM, said:

On XP, use the Universal Extractor 1.61 (or gora's unofficial 1.62) and it'll extract the exe. Then rename DATA.Z to DATA.CAB and use the Universal Extractor again.

Hi dencorso,
It did work! Universal Extractor 1.61 couldn't extract the .exe, but then I renamed DATA.Z to DATA.CAB, and the Universal Extractor extracted FMTLS120.EXE fine. FMTLS120.EXE is v1.00, is in Portuguese and seems to run fine under US DOS 7.1. When it asks "Quer continuar? (S/N)" one has to enter "Y". Its screen displays the following text, translated from Portuguese: "Low-level format utility for 120MB disks in LS-120 drives. Formatting a disk takes about 40 minutes. Disks with sectors with errors can take much longer." Maybe the English version of FMTLS120.EXE is contained in the .exe part which I couldn't extract.

To run, I just entered under DOS 7.1:
FMTLS120 J: [J: is the drive letter of the LS-120 drive, A: is used to address the drive when a regular 1.44MB floppy disk is in the drive].

Unfortunately, the low-level format of the bulk-erased LS-120 disk seems to have hung after about 40 minutes, the drive lights are off, but the drive continues to spin. I'll post further results in a little while.

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 18 June 2011 - 03:09 PM

[dencorso]

Try physical-formatting multiple times. It may work. But use the US English version, from SP9090... it's more common than anyone would imagine apps getting blorked in subtle ways on localization (translation).

[Multibooter]

I have used FMTLS120.exe (Portuguese version) to low-level format an Ok LS-120 disk, low-level formatting completed Ok after 39 minutes.

dencorso, on 25 May 2011 - 09:06 AM, said:

Try physical-formatting multiple times. It may work. But use the US English version, from SP9090... it's more common than anyone would imagine apps getting blorked in subtle ways on localization (translation).

Yes, but the original US version of FMTLS120.EXE extracted from sp9090.exe was not able to format the bulk-erased LS-120 disk either. After 20 minutes of low-level formatting (i.e. somewhere in the middle) the green drive access lights of the LS-120 drive turned off and the system was hung.

I would speculate that FMTLS120.exe does not work properly with newer LS-120 drives. The file modification date of FMTLS120.exe is 18-Mar-1998, the copyright notice states 1996.

According to Scott Mueller's "Upgrading and Repairing PCs, 14th ed, 2003" p.678, the LS-120 drives were re-designed in the mid-1999. Only the model with the PCMCIA interface continued to use the old design. Maybe FTMLS120.EXE of 1996 needs the old pre-1999 LS-120 models and has issues with the re-designed post-1999 models.

I do have an external Imation SuperDisk LS-120 drive with the PCMCIA interface, Model No. SD-PCMCIA-A. I do have the DOS driver and instructions for it, but I haven't used/installed it under DOS yet, just under Win98. But that's another project which will have to wait. Under DOS this LS-120 PCMCIA drive most likely requires also a driver to recognize the PCMCIA port (e.g. SystemSoft Card Wizard). I have been using the System Soft DOS drivers with my Adaptec 1460 SCSI PCMCIA card, to low-level format Iomega Jaz disks with SCSIutil.exe under DOS 6/7, low-level formatting of the Iomega Jaz disks is not possible under Win98.

The PCMCIA driver for the LS-120 drive can be downloaded from http://download.driv...on/d131806.html but one should completely restore the system after running the driverguide.com riskware/toolbar downloader.

Also, maybe FMTLS120.EXE works Ok under old DOS 6.22, or I should try to use the driver file CPQLS120.SYS, also contained in sp9090.exe

BTW, Bigelow's book "Troubleshooting, Maintaining and Repairing PCs", 4th ed. 2000, on pp.806-812 contains extensive trouble-shooting tips about the LS-120. For example on p.809, "Symptom 21-35: You cannot read or format LS-120 media: ... This is also a known problem on some platforms that use the FMTLS120.EXE utility included with the Imation LS-120 SuperDisk drive. Do not use this utility. Remove it from the system... The media formatted with the FMTLS120 utility may now be corrupt or unrecoverable."

Here the preliminary conclusion: Bulk erasing a LS-120 disk destroys the LS-120 disk. Maybe this conclusion can be revised when it can be established that FMTLS120.EXE low-level formats Ok bulk-erased LS-120 disks with an old and slow PCMCIA drive (440 kB/s vs 1100 kB/s of the ATA drive, half the disk rotational speed, 720rpm vs 1440 rpm).

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 26 May 2011 - 08:36 AM

[Multibooter]

Multibooter, on 25 May 2011 - 01:31 PM, said:

maybe FMTLS120.EXE works Ok under old DOS 6.22

I just tried to format under DOS 6.22 the bulk-erased LS-120 disk with FMTLS120 and with the Format command, but neither worked. I had speculated about a different handling of the media descriptor byte by these 2 programs under DOS6 and Win98 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/140060

Maybe the missing/de-gaussed media descriptor byte is the cause that the various formatting programs don't work, without it they don't know whether they should format a 720/1440 kB floppy or a 120MB LS-120 disk.

The file Fmtdata.ini in the install-to of SuperWriter32 indicates the following for LS-120 disks:
[FormatUHD]
Default = 1
MediaType = 49
Display = 3.5Inch,120MB,512Byte/Sector
DataFile = uhddata.bin
Cylinders = 963
Heads = 8
ByteSector = 512
SectorTrack = 32
BootSector = 1
Fat = 2
SectorFat = 241
Entry = 512
ByteEntry = 32

GRDuw under Win98 is in a perpetual loop trying to establish the Media Type. The MS Format command comes back with the error message: "Unable to write BOOT". Is there a program which can just write track 0 to the LS-120 disk, according to the above specifications, maybe with parameters? Or is there a program which can save track 0 of a good LS-120 disk, and then write track 0 from that file to the bulk-erased disk?

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 26 May 2011 - 08:41 AM

[dencorso]

Do ANADISK or FDFORMAT work with it?

[Multibooter]

dencorso, on 25 May 2011 - 09:07 PM, said:

Do ANADISK or FDFORMAT work with it?

No. Under MS-DOS 7.1:

Anadisk does not see/display drive J:, which is the drive-letter assigned to the LS-120 drive as a 120MB drive. Only A: is displayed/selectable, which is the drive letter of the LS-120 drive as a regular 720/1440kB floppy drive

fdformat J: t963 h8 n32 d512 b49
produces the following messages:
Drive 1 is physical 1: High-Density, 80 Tracks, 18/Sectors/track
BIOS double-step support: AT-like
Heads must be 1 or 2

fdformat has no corresponding parameter for "SectorFat=241"

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 25 May 2011 - 09:54 PM

[dencorso]

I found this. Perhaps a physical clone of a good superfloppy will do it. WinHex is able to do it. It used to have a free but limited version, but I don't remember how much limited by now, because I have a specialist licence for a long time already. BTW, it's worth every cent of the license price.

Later edit: then again, it just occurred to me that ghost -ir may be able to accomplish it as well. It's worth giving it a shot.

[Multibooter]

dencorso, on 25 May 2011 - 10:24 PM, said:

I found this. Perhaps a physical clone of a good superfloppy will do it. WinHex is able to do it.

Hi dencorso,
We seem to have similar ideas at the same time. I have just finished creating an image of a good blank LS-120 floppy with GRDuw v4.1.17 (saved as .ima, .dcf and .dim [GRDuw's own format]). Unfortunately, when I tried to restore under Win98 the image onto the bulk-erased floppy I got the following messages:
Error on Track 0, Head 0 = Access denied: disk error or drive is not ready
This disk is not usable due to surface errors
Failed

Not sure whether WinHex would do any better, I did not see LS-120 in its product description

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 25 May 2011 - 10:48 PM

[dencorso]

The first link I gave you is from the winhex support forum. Stefan Fleischmann is the actual program creator. So it has implicit credibility. Now, WinHex abilities, in what regards cloning, are similar to ghost's, so an -ir try seems fully warranted, IMO.

[Multibooter]

dencorso, on 25 May 2011 - 10:24 PM, said:

it just occurred to me that ghost -ir may be able to accomplish it as well. It's worth giving it a shot.

Ghost v11.0.2 under Win98 (at least the graphical GUI) displays as source drives only the hard disk, no removable disks.

[dencorso]

Enter BIOS and set the LS-120 as a fixed disk. There should be such an option. Then work in true DOS, to avoid a useless redetection. Just for the record, here's an LS-120 manual.

[Multibooter]

dencorso, on 25 May 2011 - 11:55 PM, said:

Enter BIOS and set the LS-120 as a fixed disk. There should be such an option.

The only LS-120 drive I have easily accessible is the one in the bootable left-bay of my 11-year-old Inspiron 7500 laptop, my other LS-120s are packed away in boxes. Unfortunately the Phoenix BIOS 4.0 Release 6.0 of the Inspiron does not allow to change the settings of this LS-120 drive. Actually it comes up at POST already as "ATAPI Removable Drive LS-120 Slim3 00 UHD Floppy", and it is possible to boot from an LS-120 disk.

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 26 May 2011 - 02:02 AM

[Multibooter]

dencorso, on 25 May 2011 - 10:59 PM, said:

The first link I gave you is from the winhex support forum. Stefan Fleischmann is the actual program creator. So it has implicit credibility. Now, WinHex abilities, in what regards cloning, are similar to ghost's, so an -ir try seems fully warranted, IMO.

Thanks for the info about WinHex, in that link above:
"I bought WinHex for making duplicates of my only bootable removable LS 12o Disk (Drive: Matsus***a). But when I clone the bootable disk via image file and backup on a new LS 120 floppy it doesn't boot. What could be wrong ? Is WinHex supporting that format at all ? Is there any other solution for producing a bootable LS 120 disk known. ?... Meanwhile, I found out that it works."

So WinHex is definitely worth trying out. What is the last/best version which works under Win98? On their product description page http://www.winhex.co...ex/index-m.html is stated:
"Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008/7, 32 Bit/64 Bit .... Earlier versions are available to licensed users on request."

GRDuw v4.1.17 can create under Win98 a .ima image file from a bootable LS-120 disk and can write the image back Ok to another LS-120 disk (i.e. forensic cloning or archiving of LS-120 disks). I just tested such a cloned LS-120 disk created from a bootable .ima LS-120 image, and the cloned bootable LS-120 disk booted fine.

BTW, to create a bootable LS-120 disk I use under Win98 the "FormatUtility for SuperDisk", which gets installed as a part of SuperWriter32 v2.03, and select "Copy System files". GRDuw v4.1.17 cannot create a good bootable disk under Win98 when one selects in the Format tab -> "Make disk bootable".

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 26 May 2011 - 10:57 AM

[dencorso]

This one. Sorry for the terseness, I'm in a hurry, right now.

[bpalone]

Another thought for copying the track 0, is to use a Linux live cd and use "dd". Be very careful with dd, as it assumes you know what you are doing and does it without asking twice. You can hose yourself in real short order. I can't remember the command syntax for dd and I'm on the road away from books. However, I think it was Kyle Rankin wrote an article in Linux Journal a year or so ago covering using dd to copy the MBR. I know this is a Windows forum, but tools are tools.

Another thought, is that in bulk erasing you may of wiped some marker off of the disk that it needs to orient itself. Might search for info on the layout of the recording surface on the LS-120.

Hope this helps. Also, hope you get it solved with what you have and are trying.

The article I mention can be found here.

This post has been edited by bpalone: 26 May 2011 - 06:25 PM

[dencorso]

What bpalone wrote may also work, but let's do one thing at a time.
Once you install WinHex, it'll work OK as the free limited version.
So, go to the Tools menu, select Open Disk, scroll the list down and see whether the LS-120 appears listed in the Physical Disks List.
If so, then a physical copy may be acquired and eventually deployed.

[Multibooter]

Thanks dencorso. The LS-120 drive is recognized under Win98 as Floppy Disk 0 and I made an image of a good LS-120 disk.

Unfortunately when I tried to transfer the .whx image to the bulk-erased LS-120 disk I got the following message:
"Only the full version allows to write sectors to the disk".

What is the last/best version of WinHex to run under Win98SE? The version in your link was v12.8 SR-10

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 27 May 2011 - 01:13 AM