Mirror HDD directly to PCem with USB Image Tool

[RaVeNsClaw]

Hello everyone,

I'm new here, so I'm sorry if I'm blurting out something that's actually common knowledge. I'm just very happy right now.

In my real DOS machines, I've switched to using CF cards instead of spinning hard disks. It makes data transfer so much easier.
I always made backups of these cards with USB Image Tool, a freeware by Alexander Beug:
https://www.alexpage.de/usb-image-tool/

I just noticed that the images created with this tool can be used directly as hard disk images.
Just by loading the .img files as hard drives. No configuration, nothing.

So I can emulate my real DOS machines perfectly, without any extra effort.
Even the Win95 installation on my 486 works.

Greetz
RaVeN

[leilei]

Yep, the raw image file format hasn't changed. I've booted some old img backups of hard drives dumped with WinImage and DD from long ago.

You can also do the reverse. I've once DD'd a prepared PCem img with xfdisk + several windows installs to a HDD on a real computer and it worked.

[NiagaraMike]

I'm curious Ravensclaw, what are your real DOS machines? I'm hoping you meant actual old hardware is all. The USB reference however is giving me pause but there is a lot of tech out there that I've never seen or heard of before. I'm really regretting tossing out my old hardware.