New Version 1.3 (still beta), which creates now compressed files (chunks of the target image file). 

The program will create an image file of a hard disk drive, and it runs with MS-DOS.
It will work even with an IBM PC/XT, but will not work properly on a modern PC with modern, large hard disk drives.

That means if a hard disk drive is sized beyond old drives, the HDD parameter will only partially read.
It uses INT 13h for getting the HDD track, sector and head information.
Newer BIOS (usually starting with ATX Pentium computer and later) will have extended INT13h support.
The information is splitted with extended INT13h support in more than one or two register, that is unsupported from this program.
Hard disk drives larger than 4GByte will *not* work, too, because the program uses 32bit Integer, not 64bit.

At the moment only one command line option is supported, which is "nopause".
With the command "hddiu nopause", the program does not pause for the exchange of the target media. This can be useful if you save the chunks of the image file first on a 2nd hard disk drive.

At the moment, the sequence number and the total number of image parts/chunks is already written into the (compressed) files, too.
But they're not evaluated for later purpose. Also, a file identifier at the beginning of each (compressed) image part is written and checked.
So if the input file for unpack wasn't a HDDIU file, it will stop trying to decompress it.

The program itself is free for private usage, but any kind of selling/distributing or using it commercially must be approved by the author, me.
You should always provide at least the original files in an archive file, if distributed elsewhere for free (that's ok!).
Also this text should be always included. I, Peter Dassow, author of this software, also will not grant any kind of guarantee for this software to be 100% error free. Plz visit www.z80.eu and my blog there. Thank you for reading.

Q & A

Q:
Will imaging work for Non-DOS OS formatted hard disk drives like XENIX or OS/2 ?
A:
Yes, the program will ignore all partition types and partitioning stuff, it uses the physical parameter of the drive.

Q:
What's the maximum size of a drive which can be imaged to a file ?
A:
It should handle at least 2GB drives, the used 32bit Integer within the program limits it to 4GB.
Also, because DOS is used, the target file will be also limited in size.

Q:
What's the minimum size for splitted image file parts (target file part size) ?
A:
Minimum size is 1MB, that means if you really like, you can use 1.2MB or 1.44MB floppies.
I do not recommend this, because it will result in a large number of floppy disks you have to use.

Q:
What happens if I do not change the target media (e.g. using ZIP 100 media) ?
A:
That means there will be no left space for the next created image part, so it runs into an error.
An error while creating the image file will result in a program exit.

Q:
How to use an image if splitted in parts ?
A:
First, you have to uncompress all the created files by using the batch file (FOREACH.BAT) or
by manually applying the UNPACK.EXE for each compressed file.
You can merge the uncompressed files (they start with '~' always) together with a DOS command.
Just type in 'COPY /B ~part.001 ~part.002 ~part.xxx result.img'.
In this example, xxx is the highest number which was created, part.001 is the first created target file,
result.img is the created final image file which is no more splitted.
Or just use FOREACH.BAT ;-)

Q:
What can I do with the (merged) image file ?
A:
You can use it for modern PC Emulator programs like PCem or 86box or even VMWare Workstation Player.
The image file is a 1-to-1 raw sector copy of the hard disk drive, nothing else (no header etc.).
