Tool - Bulk Disk Image Converter
Author: Copyright (C) 2014 by CiderPress authors

Bulk Disk Image Converter

The bulk converter works much like the single-image converter, but it can process a large number of disk images with a few clicks. It's probably best to become familiar with the single-image converter before using this feature.

After you select this feature from the "Tools" menu, you will be asked to select the disk images to convert. All images must reside in the same folder. Select multiple files with the mouse, using shift-clicks to select a range of files or ctrl-clicks to add or remove individual files. You can select all files in the current folder by clicking on one and then hitting Ctrl-A.

Next, you will be asked to choose the output format. All images will be converted to the same format. Not all images can convert to all formats -- for example, you can't create 800K nibble images or 140K DiskCopy images -- so make sure you choose an appropriate format. CiderPress will not prompt you to specify sector ordering, so it's important for the images to have descriptive filename extensions (e.g. ".po" instead of the generic ".dsk").

Finally, select a folder for the output. Creating a new, empty folder is recommended. The converted files will have the old names but with the extension replaced, but in some cases the old extension might match the new. For example, converting a DOS-ordered 2MG file to a ProDOS-ordered 2MG file does not change the ".2MG" extension. CiderPress will not overwrite an existing file.

If CiderPress encounters a file it cannot convert, you will be shown an error message with the name of the file and given the opportunity to skip the file and continue or halt processing. Some messages, such as warnings about unreadable blocks on nibble images, are suppressed during bulk conversions.

If you are converting to ShrinkIt .SDK archives, the files will be compressed with the current default compression method. This provides an easy way to convert a large set of disk images to "deflate" format for reduced storage requirements, or back to LZW/2 for Apple II compatibility.