Re: making a boot disk on iigs

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Roger Johnstone replied:

>In <20040221050854.15108.00000107@mb-m18.aol.com> Michael J. Mahon wrote:
>> Jeff Blakeney replied:
>> 
>>> There are some copy protection
>>>schemes that don't store data in normal files, they just put it into
>>>blocks or sectors on the disk with no directory entry.  It is possible
>>>that these blocks or sectors are still getting marked as being used in
>>>the block or sector table but it would be nice to have the option to
>>>just copy everything instead of just the stuff marked as being used.
>> 
>> If data is stored in blocks/sectors not marked used, then the disk
>> had better be write-protected, or the data isn't long for this world.  ;-)
>
>I've seen one very good example of why sometimes you do want a whole-
>disk archive. Years ago I was looking at a demo disk, from the FTA I 
>think. For some reason I was using a utility on the disk and found some 
>deleted files which I could undelete. They were programs left over from 
>the development, and full of all sorts of interesting things. Software 
>archaeology!

Yes, I, too, have had this experience.  In fact, as I mentioned in
another thread recently, I once found the source of the copy
protection nibble count on a disk.  ;-)

I think this is yet another case of recasting a design error as
a feature.  ;-)

I'm sure you'd agree, though, that giving the archiver a choice
about whether to include unallocated sectors is reasonable
(kind of like using a "wipe deleted files" utility before archiving,
but more efficient).

-michael

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