What is a disk image ?

A disk image is a file which is an exact and complete image of a floppy disk. The image contains information on the disk format and structure, such as FAT, boot sector, directories, and all files.

By using WinImage, you can create an exact copy of an original disk, including non-standard capacity and format disks.

As an example, you can read a floppy disk and copy it as one image file to your hard disk. Later, without using the original floppy disk, you can extract any file from the image - just as if you had copied the file from the original floppy disk itself.

You can create exact copies of the original disk onto new floppy disks.

You can also create disk images with WinImage. For example, if you want to put five files, taking 1.3 Mb, on a 3"1/2 HD that has a normal capacity of 1.2Mb, you can create an empty 1.44 Mb image on the floppy, inject the five files into it from the hard disk, and in one operation you have formatted the floppy and written the image on it.

Unlike the DOS DiskCopy command, WinImage can format and use very large-capacity and non-standard disk formats. As an example, a 3"1/2 HD floppy can be formatted out to 1.72 Mb and a 5"1/4 HD can be formatted out to 1.44 Mb.

Once loaded, you can extract files from an image to any floppy, hard disk or network disk.

You can add files to an image.

The image can be copied onto a floppy (which must have the same format), or saved in a file.

An image file contains all the sectors of a floppy disk. If it's not full, you can truncate unused image parts, making the image file smaller.

WinImage can read images created by other disk copy utilities.

Wimage (in FdFormat utility) from C.H. Hochstätter

CopyVit from Sébastien Chatard

DrDos 6

OS/2 2.x and 3.x

DCF (Disk Copy Fast) from Chang Ping Lee

DF (Disk Image File Utility) from Mark Vitt

Super-DiskCopy from Super Software

SabDu from S.A. Berman

Disk-RW from K. Hartnegg

DiskDupe from Micro System Design

and the internal Microsoft and Lotus image features and utilities along with the MFMT sample Windows NT application that comes with the Windows NT SDK.