Archiving old hard drives

[themarkus]

Over the years I saved the hard drives from all of my computers. I now have a box full of hard drives that I would like to archive. I would like to create and save exact images (byte for byte) of all my drives.

Because of not always moving files over from old computers and an external hard drive that failed several years ago, I would like to eventually run file recover software on these disk images. It is important that the disk images are perfect clones of the original drives so that erased files may still be recovered.

I have a mixture of internal Windows drives, external Mac drives, and some Iomega Zip disks that I am trying to archive. I can get my Mac to successfully mount all the drives (for the old Windows drives I have to use a USB IDE adapter), and it appears that I could use Disk Utility to create a "New Image" file for each of my drives.

My question is whether Apple Disk Utility images are exact copies that could later be used in conjunction with file recovery software, or if I am better off using a program such as SuperDuper or CCC to make copies of these disks?

I did do some research on archiving hard drives, but found little information about the best way of doing this. I am also not sure if there are problems created when mac programs clone windows disks. I am appreciative of any advice. Thanks in advance for your help.
--Markus

[dnanian]

We copy file-by-file and would be inappropriate for this use, sorry.

[hapmac]

Originally Posted by themarkus

I did do some research on archiving hard drives, but found little information about the best way of doing this. I am also not sure if there are problems created when mac programs clone windows disks. I am appreciative of any advice. Thanks in advance for your help.
--Markus

hey Markus -- I have a somewhat similar situation w/accumulated drives over the years -- makes me wonder if some of the forensic hard drive recovery software or the device by wiebetech.com that completely clones drives (and has the option to lock them I think) is what's needed. have you checked those -- expensive however from what i recall.
http://www.wiebetech.com/products/Fo..._UltraDock.php

although I do remember recently reading an article (apple.com kbase maybe? the location of that article is just a sliver of a memory ) re: locking a drive thru a terminal command before running recovery or cloning -- which makes complete sense to me especially since I have one or two of the bricked seagate 1TB drives

and don't know what's out there in opensource land but I would be extremely cautious on a project like this due to legacy problems, etc. for sure never use a stuffit product since they don't support opening files archived or compressed with their own early versions.

if you ever determine what works, would appreciate a head's up. and vice versa altho it's not at the top of my priority list, hafta admit but if I do I will post here/send pm.


good luck !

ps: sometimes xlr8yourmac.com has some great resources especially re: drives & mac related upgrades w/ user details and comments in their databases. it would be good place for superduper to advertise