Talking about floppy disks in the age of flash storage and massive drives is at least anachronistic, but there's always that image we download from the Web or that belongs to an old backup, from which we need to extract a file or two. Mounting a conventional ISO is relatively simple, however, to read floppy disk images in Windows, we recommend using a copy of ImDisk, which also works as a RAM disk creator.
I have many floppy disks to back up, and not a single computer capable of reading them. The shoemaker's children go barefoot, multiplied by about 15 disks. The good news is that they are only original disks of old operating systems, and a quick visit to the Internet Archive will allow me to obtain fairly faithful copies. However, that sets the need to read floppy disk images in Windows, and extract files from them without difficulty. That's where ImDisk comes in
How to read floppy disk images with ImDisk
Previously I spoke about ImDisk highlighting its virtues as a free and open-source RAM disk creator, but today I want to emphasize its function for mounting images. Technically, ImDisk can mount a wide number of popular formats, including ISO, BIN, VMWare, and even the old NRG of Nero Burning Rom, and support extends to raw floppy disk images like IMG and IMA.
All you have to do to start is open the "Mount image file" wizard, and search for the desired image. Most likely ImDisk will automatically assign the letter A: and configure the virtual device as a floppy. Click OK, and a few seconds later, File Explorer will open with the image mounted on A:, showing all its content. Once you have extracted the files from the image, a simple click on "Unmount" is enough to revert the changes.
If you decide to click on the "Driver interface" button, ImDisk will take you to what many consider its "advanced version", but it works exactly the same way: You load the image, configure the drive letter, and choose the device type. The difference is that here you can specify whether ImDisk should access the image directly, or work with a copy in memory. At the same time, in this menu you can indicate a read-only access, or declare the virtual drive as removable.
In summary: To read floppy disk images in Windows, ImDisk should be one of your first options. It is free, open source, easy to use, and its function as a RAM disk is extremely useful. Do not hesitate to get a copy.
Official site and download: Click here
