Read Unix floppies on Windows XP?

[tru]

I'm making a pass at cleaning up/reducing my computer stuff, and I have some floppies that were created on a UNIX system. My UNIX system is no more.

Is there some utility that will let me read these on my Windows XP system? (If I just insert one of these floppies, Windows tells me it needs formatting.) Thanks.

[Pholus]

1. What unix?

[tru]

2. uh

I was working for DEC when I created these, on my Alpha, so I guess OSF. Brain rot has set in after all this time.

[Pholus]

6. Under linux, I'd "dd" the disks to hdd images so that the problem can be deferred if not critical.

I don't know much about the filesystem so I can't say what mounts it. But preserving the blocks would probably be a good first start.

[Pholus]

7. Did you really mean OSF or UFS?

Sorry, trying to do some background reading -- unsuccessfully....

[tru]

9. OSF n/t

[Dead_Parrot]

3. Depends on the file system...

There's not many tools for using non-windows filesystems, but you could try explore2fs - you may get lucky. You could also try Linux (either an installed system or a live CD) as it supports quite a few file systems out of the box.

[tru]

4. no such luck

I tried it, but it seems to see nothing. Thanks anyway.

[steve2470]

5. I'm no expert at this but you could try a Live CD version of Linux

You put the Linux distro on a DVD or CD, boot it up from there and maybe you could read the floppies that way.

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download

That's one suggestion for a distro above, but of course there's many others. Good luck.

eta: what Dead_Parrot said above

[karnac]

8. I would recommend an Ultimate LiveCD

http://ultimateedition.info/
They made a ridiculous effort to include every option/module/filesystem available.

Version 2.8 is a decent choice. I've successfully used it on a one gig memory P4 system to copy from HFS(mac OS/X) and Xenix to NTFS(XP/Vista/Win7)

[tru]

10. thanks everyone for the suggestions

I will look at the new ones. Fortunately none of these files are crucial, just stuff I'd like to keep.

[Pholus]

11. This utility might also be useful if you can just get the image...

http://www.osforensics.com/tools/mount-disk-images.html