Monday, August 3, 2009

Creating a Floppy Image in Windows

It's not too often any more that we need a floppy drive image created, but there are times (such as when accessing a server through iLO) when it's handy to have a virtual floppy drive.

There are a lot of shareware and commercial programs out there that will create a .img file from other files on your file system, but I had a hard time finding a free floppy image creation package. BFI (Build Floppy Image), thank goodness, still is around. It's a very easy-to-use floppy image creation command line tool that is fully free. 

It's old, and it's unsupported, but it works.
Rather than hosting the files here, I'll link to BFI's home page. If you find that the page or files are down, let me know, and I'll post it here. Turns out the home page link finally went away.  Here's a link to the download.

In short, what you do is put the files you want to write to your image in their own directory.
Here's an example of its usage. Say I want to create a floppy image file at c:\temp\myfloppy.img, containing all of the files in c:\temp\floppyfiles. The command I'd use to do this is:

bfi -f=c:\temp\myfloppy.img c:\temp\floppyfiles

That's it. Enjoy your new (free and legal) floppy disk image!
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29 comments:

  1. AnonymousFebruary 1, 2012 at 11:02 AM

    Thanks Lane! I found this one very VERY useful! BTW it's interesting how VMware Server 2 asks for .flp type of image, but still works as a charm if you simply change extension .img > .flp ;>

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousApril 17, 2012 at 4:50 AM

    Thank you very much for showcasing this handy little tool, helped me a lot!

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJune 23, 2012 at 12:12 AM

    finally my search ended here...thanx a lot!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousNovember 18, 2012 at 7:47 AM

    Thanks a lot! :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousMay 21, 2014 at 7:11 AM

    Hallo and thankyou from Germany Hamburg

    ReplyDelete
  6. RosdiMay 24, 2014 at 11:51 PM

    Thanks it works!

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnonymousJuly 1, 2014 at 4:55 PM

    This is incredibly useful.

    ReplyDelete
  8. AnonymousDecember 11, 2014 at 10:01 AM

    It seems to be gone as of 11 Dec 2014 - "Server not found".

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. LaneDecember 13, 2014 at 9:58 AM

      Thanks for the heads-up. I'm still finding it's working OK, but I'll keep my eye on it.

      Delete
  9. AnonymousMarch 28, 2016 at 3:32 PM

    Linked site is down.

    ReplyDelete
  10. UnknownApril 19, 2016 at 3:49 PM

    Linked side doesn't exist anymore, could you please give us another link, or maybe an alternatively tool?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. LaneApril 20, 2016 at 7:43 PM

      You're right: it's down. I've updated the post with a link to the file. Thanks for the heads-up!

      Delete
  11. UnknownFebruary 20, 2018 at 9:40 PM

    Still useful. Who would have thought in 2018 I would still need a floppy disk for something? (SparQ Drive)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Jose AguilarMay 3, 2018 at 2:36 PM

    Awesome post! Very helpful

    ReplyDelete
  13. UnknownAugust 9, 2018 at 8:33 AM

    Very helpful, thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  14. AnonymousMarch 1, 2021 at 9:02 AM

    Thank you so much!!

    ReplyDelete
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  16. AnonymousAugust 17, 2021 at 1:44 PM

    2021 and still useful. Thank You, Lane, from all my heart! - Roman Parshin

    ReplyDelete
  17. ifknotSeptember 16, 2021 at 5:24 PM

    September 2021 - still useful

    ReplyDelete
  18. jeroenOctober 24, 2022 at 6:48 AM

    2022 still going strong. Thank you so much. Regards.

    ReplyDelete
  19. AnonymousJanuary 31, 2023 at 6:05 PM

    This was the most helpful site for updating my BIOS with a Gotek floppy emulator. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  20. Shona67March 16, 2023 at 4:17 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
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  24. Robert EsguerraJune 10, 2023 at 8:32 PM

    This link (https://web.archive.org/web/20051216040954/http://www.nu2.nu/download.php?sFile=bfi10.zip) through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine still allows you to download BFI10.zip.

    ReplyDelete
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  27. AnonymousNovember 24, 2024 at 4:19 AM

    I wonder what happened. As all references to bfi.exe (bfi10.zip) are gone. Build Floppy Image v1.0 are all gone/dead.

    ReplyDelete

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