There are a number of tools to perform disk imaging and it often depends on the original media. If you need to attach a specific type of physical media to the processing computer, see the appropriate section in Connecting devices before attempting to use the software below. Look at the brief descriptions below and determine which tool best work for your situation and follow the links to the workflow documentation.
Disk imaging tools
Guymager, CCA Tools, and Brasero all require use of BitCurator, a customized Linux operating system, that we run on a virtual machine through Windows or as a standalone machine on FRED.
To access do the following steps:
To access on Windows, follow these steps:
Click on the Oracle Virtual Box shortcut on the Windows desktop screen
Virtual Box will open, click on the BitCurator with the most current version number after it (e.g. 4.4.0)
Wait for the operating system to load. Once you see a screen with a blue background, BitCurator is ready to use.
To access on FRED, turn on the computer and log in with the BitCurator username (bcadmin) and password.
Guymager
Guymager is an all purpose software tool with a user interface for creating disk images. In general, it is your first choice for imaging hard drives, memory cards, Zip disks, 3.5” floppy disks via USB, and data on optical discs.
FTKImager
FTK Imager is a similar general purpose imaging tool as Guymager but it is our second choice for imaging imaging hard drives, memory cards, Zip disks, 3.5” floppy disks via USB, and CDs/DVDs due to the inability to alter the metadata elements entered when creating an image and it being closed source software. We use FTK Imager mainly when imaging fails with Guymager or when we can’t get the external media to be recognized in BitCurator.
Kryoflux software
Beyond being a controller card that allows USB access to legacy floppy drives, the Kryoflux software is also a software tool for imaging these floppy disks. We use the Kryoflux software for all 5.25 and 8 inch disks and 3.5 inch disks that don’t image properly with Guymager/FTK Imager.
Brasero
Brasero is a tool for easily creating ISO disk images of CD-ROMs and DVDs. Generally it is used when it’s important that the content have playable menus such as with DVD and CD menus deemed worthy of preservation. If you are only concerned about the other content, consider using Guymager or making a logical transfer. If it’s unclear whether the item would need to be an ISO image based on the reasons mentioned above, you can create a disk image using Guymager and it could also be re-imaged as an ISO image in the future.
Alternatives
There is a list here of alternative disk imaging or copying software. In particular, Exact Audio Copy works well for digital audio on CD (CD-DA). There are a number of tricky CD formats, please consult the digital archivist if you feel that one of these other options needs to be set up.