Dolly useful tool!
Ben Avison of Piccolo Systems (and RISC OS Open Ltd) has released version 1.01 of CloneDisc, which he describes as “a general purpose tool for copying the entire contents of a disc,” and which “features full support for disc image files.”
The software’s capabilities, explains Ben in his announcement at the beginning of August, fall into four major areas:
- As a backup tool, for creating an exact copy from one disc to another.
- For initialising a disc from a disc image file.
- For creating disc image files in the first place, starting from a template disc.
- As a way of securely erasing all the data on a disc.
Supported filing systems include ADFS for IDE/ATA hard discs on Acorn-era machines and Castle’s IyonixPC, SCSI for Acorn-compatible SCSI drives and all drives attached via USB, and SDFS for on-board MMC, SD and Micro-SD readers as found on modern hardware.
The software can provide full diagnostics on discs that are formatted to FileCore E or E+ formats, as well as FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32. Other formats can be copied, but will not be identified and the disc name not shown.
Requiring RISC OS 5, the software can be purchased online for £12.
