Info-Mac

the g3-300mhz, 256ram, 3gb harddrive has legacy software and the financial files
it created. the machine recognises a 2gb usb flashdrive, in fact it insisted that the native vfat format be redone in dos, macos, or macos extended. i want to be able to preserve the files and read them if needed. is there software for an os8.6
which will create an imagefile of the whole shebang---which is less than 2gb--??

if i put it on the flash drive [dos] where could i read it?, a virtual machine ?
as you can see, i'm out of my depth, thanks for any suggestions, cheers, mm

Find a copy of "Disk Copy" which, if not already on your computer, you can find on Mac OS 7/8/9 install or restore CDs. Go to the Image menu and select 'Create Image from Disk..." and select your hard drive and choose your flash drive as the destination. Make the format Read-Only Compressed to save space:
It will create an .IMG file, which is Mac OS Classic's default disk image format (not .ISO). You can open this disk image on another classic Mac or in Mac OS X. But you should probably have the flash drive formatted as Mac OS Extended - "DOS" (FAT32, I believe) may lose vital information stored in the disk image's resource fork.

thanks for the response; search with sherlock for local file with 'Disk Copy' in the name returns nothing--i'll try the restore cd...when os8.6 first read the usb
thumb drive it immediately asked to reformat it to macos or macos extended or dos.
i chose dos, unfortunately, because i haven't found a way to reformat it to macos extended, only the hard and cd drives show up on the choice lists for reformatting
so i'll try using another machine, linux or winxp, to format the usb stick in a way which will recall the original response from os8.6 when i reinsert the stick
cheers, mm

Select your disk image when it's mounted, go to the "Special" menu in the Finder and select Erase Disk... it will let you select the Mac formats again.

i tried reformatting via erase disk but the format dialog did not appear so i used
a linux os as outlined above--

so far so good: usb drive formatted macos extended, disk copy on restore cd installed, i can choose hard drive in create image from disc---but i can't find where to choose destination...do i use the edit menu to copy/paste the .img file into the usb drive? cheers, mm

of course when i tried erase disk just now the format dialog box was active...
the mount box is ticked by default in the disk copy window, is this important?
the hard drive is 3gb with 1.8gb vacant. when i drag and drop the macintosh hd
icon onto the usb drive icon the dialog window tells me copying will take an hour.
but i stopped it because i don't know if a simple copying like that will let one
reproduce an operating system,,,anyway i can't find any useful help in disk copy
so i'm looking forward to yr post, cheers, mm

If you're not creating a disk image and just straight up copying the contents of your hard drive to a USB drive, then yeah 2 GB over USB 1.x taking an hour (or even more) sounds about right.

no i need, i think , to create a disk image to recreate the legacy programs to read the data files they created...old accounting software. i can't find the way to choose a destination for the image file and i was exploring other copy options to see what happened...sorry to have shifted focus there---how do i choose destination---when i choose h-drive as source and click save a window tells me i can't have h-drive and h-drive.img on the same disk, then disk copy aborts. if i unclick mount button maybe that will help? cheers, mm

Honestly, I'm not sure why I can't figure out what you're doing or seeing. If you're in Mac OS, and your flash drive is mounted (is it?), then you should be able to first select your hard drive as the source of the new disk image, then select your flash drive as the destination, all while in Disk Copy's "Create image from Disk" menu option. It firsts presents you with a dialog to select the source, then another dialog to select the destination as well as the options.

The picture I attached above is a screenshot of that dialog. Do you not see that dialog on your computer at any point?

thx for the quick reply: i'm in os 8.6, an icon for the flash drive appears on the desktop [when i double-click on it an empty window appears with the flash drive's name in the title bar]--does this mean it's mounted? , the screenshot is just like what i see when i choose 'create image from disk', then choose 'macintosh-hd' [only i get 1,239,791 K].

where do i find the dialog to select destination and options?....cheers, mm

mmrr wrote:where do i find the dialog to select destination and options?

My screenshot is the select destination dialog. If you see that, then you've already told Disk Copy to create an image of your hard drive in a previous screen. In the dialog that is my screenshot, you have to double click your flash drive to select it as the destination.

okay, thanks, i double-clicked the flash drive entry in the list of items in the equivalent window/screenshot which appeared on my desktop, then the flash drive name apperared in the top left corner of that window, i clicked the save button
i think, and now a progess bar window called zeroing macintosh hd is showing
slow but steady progress...is this what i'm supposed to be seeing? cheers, mm

mmrr wrote:is this what i'm supposed to be seeing?

Yes.

great! however, i had to go away from the ibook computer for a few minutes and when i returned just now the screen was black, i could hear the compu working and i could see the blue light in the flash drive blinking [usually it's steady] so i assumed that the flashdrive was being written to...i tried a number of keys to see if i could bring the display back, keys which would not trigger an action, but to no avail. any suggestions most welcome, thanks for walking me through diskcopy, mm

ps..just had chat with owner/previous operator of ibook--the black screen is not a new problem, sleep management issues, perhaps poor system battery, hard shutdown only cure for blackscreen--so i'll wait for the flash drive light to return to steady state, wait a bit longer, try the reset button, i guess, then try to test the flash drive somewhere. maybe a computer store.

It sounds to me like, aside from the screen issue, you're basically describing what should be happening. After it finishes, restart the iBook, plug in the flash drive, and see if you can find your new disk image on the flash drive.

right you are, new disk image on flash drive, opens just like the original, thanks very much. [oddly enough when the flash drive light was finished flashing!! i tapped a key i'd tapped before and this time the screen resumed appropriate display] now i can think about what else to do with that ibook; the harddrive runs nearly all the time, with a noise like a large mosquito, do you think a fresh install on a clean disk might address that? only when i click spin down hdisk it stops for a bit then starts again. another thing i'm curious about is trying linux on the ibook, any thoughts? cheers, mm