How to backup MPC zip disks on a Mac

Hi All,

I've been reading these forums for quite a while now and have picked up a ton of useful information. Now I've discovered something which might be useful to others so I thought I should post.

I have backed up my MPC3000 (OS 3.11) zip disks to my Mac laptop in case they get corrupted. I have successfully restored back to a zip disk. This was done with out-of-the-box OS X tools.

You will need a USB zip drive to connect to your Mac. Once connected, insert your disk, open a terminal and run the following command:



This will provide some output with a couple of lines along the lines of:



You can spot the zip disk because it's 100Mb. The IDENTIFIER (here 'disk1') is used throughout the following commands, replace 'disk1' with whatever your disk identifier is.

To Backup

First, make sure the disk is unmounted:



The following command will create an image of your zip disk called zip1 in your home directory (takes 10-15 mins):



Then eject the disk:



Job done!

To Restore

Make sure the disk is unmounted:



Then restore the backup:



Then eject the disk:



I hope that is useful to someone, it at least gives me some confidence that I haven't lost a ton of stuff if one of my aging zip disks packs up.

Cheers,
Lloyd.

This is a well presented DD example.

Similar ( identical in some cases ) to processes that can be performed on UNIX and LINUX platforms.

This process can be further simplified to eliminate much of the terminal command line work.

How ?

Via implementing all required command line actions within a shell script.

That way, at the terminal prompt; you would simply have to type the name of your "copy ZIP to image" / "copy image to ZIP" shell script file containing all required terminal command lines.



Rohan

I was looking for the information regarding DD command. This is very useful information. I don't have MPC-3000, but I own MPC-2000XL. This instruction is also useful for making backup of CF card used for XL as well.

Thank you!