[tyn]

Hi,

I would find a virtual floppy drive very useful and since StarPort is all about simulation of drives I thought this might be a good place to suggest it.

The reason I need a virtual floppy drive is because my laptop doesn't have one. Several programs require a floppy to function properly. An example is Norton Ghost.

If you configure your hard disc with 4 primary partitions, as I have, Ghost cannot reboot the computer and use its virtual partition to boot into PC DOS for the DOS version of Ghost to do its job.

What I need is to be able to create an virtual A drive and use it just like a normal A drive to format and get Ghost to create a boot disc image on it. If the virtual drive can write to a USB memory key then I can configure my BIOS to boot from the key and I should get all the functionality out of Ghost.

Does anyone else think a virtual floppy drive would be useful?

Thanks
Ty

[lx_uk]

Hi,

I haven't seen SCSI floppy drives yet. The thing is that StarPort/StarWind works only with SCSI devices by nature of iSCSI protocol. It also supports IDE/SATA and some USB devices only because OS provides SCSI-like access to them.

BTW I saw floppy disk emulator in the Net. I guess you will find it typing "virtual floppy drive" in Google.

[tyn]

Thanks for the ressponse. I didn't realise that your software relies so much on the SCSI interface; but now that you mention it I suppose it is obvious.

Thanks for the hint about searching using google. I was way ahead of you on that one and I have been e-mailing Ken Kato (author of vitual floppy driver at VMware's back) about his driver. Unfortunately his latest version isn't ready for passing the Beta stage and his version 1 is quite limited in functionality.


Ty

[KOOLER]

Actually I have SCSI floppy in my collection. IOmega floptical drive for 21MB disks. Also accepts standard 1.44MB floppies. Took it from old SGI machine 4 years ago

We really have no plans to add floppy emulation support for now.

[realmryder]

The best solution for using Ghost is to create a bootable CD with everything you need on it. If you go to www.nu2.nu, you will find everything you need to work on a PC in the form of Bart's PE. This is a bootable CD that loads a slim version of WinXP or Win2K3 and allows you to add plugins to it. Since the CD is running Windows, it autodetects almost all devices and drivers can be added for devices it doesn't detect. I have Ghost32 running on my Bart'sPE CD as well as Nero, and many other tools. This is the most versitile tool I have found in a long time.

On a second note, does the team know of Bart's PE and if so, have they investigated creating a plugin for it for this product? I have just found this product and plan to do some extensive testing as it may make it possible for me to have my remote sites perform a backup to my local system. Is there any documentation on what ports/protocols iSCSI uses and has any testing been done through an Internet firewall/router?

Thanks

[KOOLER]

Yes, we know about this product. We would be happy to have a shared project with this guys is they would get in touch with us. Thank you for pointing :-)

Originally Posted by realmryder

The best solution for using Ghost is to create a bootable CD with everything you need on it. If you go to www.nu2.nu, you will find everything you need to work on a PC in the form of Bart's PE. This is a bootable CD that loads a slim version of WinXP or Win2K3 and allows you to add plugins to it. Since the CD is running Windows, it autodetects almost all devices and drivers can be added for devices it doesn't detect. I have Ghost32 running on my Bart'sPE CD as well as Nero, and many other tools. This is the most versitile tool I have found in a long time.

On a second note, does the team know of Bart's PE and if so, have they investigated creating a plugin for it for this product? I have just found this product and plan to do some extensive testing as it may make it possible for me to have my remote sites perform a backup to my local system. Is there any documentation on what ports/protocols iSCSI uses and has any testing been done through an Internet firewall/router?

Thanks

[RDPetruska]

Check out Ken Kato's site for his Virtual Floppy Drive.
http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/

[cyryl_the_wolf]

I have been searching for a decent virtual floppy drive app for a LONG time. This one is AWESOME. Thanks for the link to Kato's site.

This program does EVERYTHING you'd ever want a floppy drive to do. However... If you're using the VFD for an application that automatically writes to the A: you'll have to get into the Registry editor and change the drive letter of your HARDWARE floppy drive in order to allocate drive letter A to the virtual floppy drive. Here is the KEY you follow in XP/2000:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

On the right side of the registry editor find the BINARY VALUE:
"\DosDevices\A:"

Right-click it and select "Rename" from the dropdown menu. Change the A to a CAPITAL B. (Or whatever drive letter you wish to drop the hardware floppy drive onto...just to get it out of the way.)

Once you are done you may close the registry editor. Get into Kato's floppy drive emulator control panel and set up the VF drive. Use "Drive 0" and save the virtual floppy drive image file as:

filename.img

I recommend saving it into the virtual floppy drive program folder to keep track of it.
Remember to change the letter of the new VFD to A: in this case. ("Persistent\Global" it will say.)

Awesome.