Keatah wrote:

I do this monthly with modern OS'es and tools from Acronis & Macrium. But what's the 1993 486-compatible equivalent?

Until I read this line I would have said Acronis True Image 7. It was 98/XP compatible and came with a rescue media that ran on DOS/Linux (req. 32-64 MiB RAM).
Hm.. Back in 1980s my papa used PC-Tools PC-backup/PC-Restore, which however was a file-based backup program.
Another program from the 286-486 era was "Sytos", again file-based, but for streamer drives (QIC etc.)

For complete backups, perhaps something that uses the raw image format (*.img) is the way to go.
It can be created with dd (?) on *nix and read by WinImage and emulators like DOSBox.

Edit: You can try using Win32DiskImager.
Perhaps you can run it on that old PC via Win9x or NT 4. in case of Win9x, maybe KernelEx can help.
Or you can use an IDE-USB converter thing and start Win32DiskImager on a modern PC.
However, please keep in mind that modern OSes maybe corrupt/alter the old filesystem during the mount process.

Edit: I know there's another backup program for DOS that uses images.
I forgot its name. I'll keep searching.

Cool. Those are some things to try. I'm not opposed to taking the drives out of the 486 and connecting them to a Pentium III winXP era computer if it results in a more solid and/or user-friendly experience. In fact, I'm just now reassembling the vintage rig after a thorough cleaning and photoshoot.

If you can manage to purchase an older version of Norton Ghost, that should work too .

I think I actually have an older version of Ghost 4.x or something. I have to dig through all my stuff and see. IIRC I might even be able to span across zip disks. But that isn't a requirement. Given the choice I'd rather have access to the files (from the image) in a modern way.

I know a USB-IDE cable for hooking drives to modern systems won't work on older drives from CHS/BIOS era. The adapters simply don't support such translation modes.

But first things first, the immediate goal is to discover several ways of doing this and then picking the best (for me) option.

To avoid this constant hassle, I stopped using internal drives and use external SCSI drives.
U160 equipment is cheap, fast and high quality+durability compared to vintage IDE/SATA stuff.
To back up, just connect the drives enclosure to a Linux box and do backup as you are used to.

I often used http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/ for machines with a network card.
And for local disk imaging under DOS, I used dolly, you can find it at https://www.sac.sk/files.php?d=14&p=14

retardware wrote:

To avoid this constant hassle, I stopped using internal drives and use external SCSI drives.
U160 equipment is cheap, fast and high quality+durability compared to vintage IDE/SATA stuff.
To back up, just connect the drives enclosure to a Linux box and do backup as you are used to.

The system I want to back up and preserve is a vintage & sentimental machine from the early-mid 1990's. I want to keep the hardware as it is and stick with the original drives and their setups as much as possible. If it were a modern-day machine or a non-sentimental business rig (for example) I wouldn't mind converting it to external media.

lolo799 wrote:

I often used http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/ for machines with a network card.
And for local disk imaging under DOS, I used dolly, you can find it at https://www.sac.sk/files.php?d=14&p=14

This looks interesting and hopeful. I wonder If I can span across Zip Disks? Temporarily just as a transfer medium till I transfer it to a modern pc. For that matter I wonder if I can ghost-cast over a network from a Dos 6.22 machine to either XP or 10?

Or, I wonder if Iomega has backup tools for Zip disks straight away.

Lots to check out. I will likely pick 2 differing solutions as redundancy. Hopefully I can get to it and finish by mid-march. Thanks to all who are replying.

The easiest way (to me, since I already have the required hardware in abundance) is adding a temporary second HDD to make the backup of the other HDD, and send the image file for a modern computer for backup purposes thru LAN.

Actually all my setups have a SCSI HDD permanantly as image backup disk. The copies of the all partitions from the "real" HDD(s) of the rig is stored in there for easy access, and backed up in external drives connected to the modern computer thru LAN. And I use Norton Ghost (versions up to 2003 can be run from a DOS boot floppy) exclusively, that is the most practical imager that I came up with. Actually I have at least WFW 3.11 installed in my machines and this helps a lot for connecting to the modern rig thru LAN, but I know DOS based FTP software is also available.

Seems I will go with just connecting the drives to my P3 XP machine and image from there. I can use Acronis 2011 which I used to back up other stuff. A sector-by-sector image whips by in a just a few minutes. It's not like I'm going to be backing up and restoring these on a regular basis. Just needed a safety net and way to keep the machine the way it was. You know?

And I now have some older versions of Ghost which I believe will run natively on the 486. Something to play with. So I consider the problem solved. Thanks to all. It was interesting to see the various solutions presented.

Acronis sucessfully(?) imaged the disks, but failed to restore them. It wouldn't even let me select the target drive. Failing at the very last step. So much for that.

I tried Paragon tools 12 for the heck of it and it imaged and restored the disk, but, the disk wouldn't boot. So much for a sector-by-sector image. FAIL. Thankfully I test-restored to an identical spare drive.

I found this tool, HDD RAW COPY TOOL
https://hddguru.com/software/HDD-Raw-Copy-Tool/
..and it worked perfectly. Imaged it to a RAW format that dd can apparently use. Saved and restored all sectors. And passed restoring to a blank zero'd identical drive. Simple and effective.

Next I'll experiment with Ghost and other things, for fun.