Well here goes my question/cry for help:
I have several old games, still on floppy disk, and i would like to keep them and transfer to another physical/logical medium (ie: HDD).
Considering that floppy drives are disapearing very fast I and that i have several games that have the famous "bad sector" copy protection, it makes impossible for me to just copy the files and run the game.
What i would like to know is if someone knows what should i do to keep/play those games other than on floppy, and if there is any software (preferably free) that can make a sort of .iso file from the floopy.
Thank you for your help

This has a 30 day trail and allows you to make diskette images and put them on cd or harddrive.
http://www.undisker.com/products/undisker/faq.html

No matter what you decide to do... do it fast.
I did the same some months ago, I converted all my old Floppy disk to image and I had tons of them with bad sector even though I stored them with care.
To do the images I used Floppy image that stonebro mentioned, there are others program allowing you to create floppy image (like MagicISO), but this one has the advantage of having been created especially for that so you don't have to wander through 5 menu/submenu for every single floppy disk.
Here are some advice based on my personal experience.
- If possible try with multiple floppy drive, you might have a floppy unreadable on one drive that will be readable with another.
- With floppy image be carefull with the option you choose some might lower the compatibility with other apps. For example VMWare don't like that much if you floppy image have comments (an option of FloppyImage) or are compressed.
- If one of your floppy is unreadable... try again... at least three time before giving up, old floppy reading is not an exact science, just because it failled twice doesn't means it wont work the third time.
- If making an image fail, try to copy the files instead, sometime the bad sector is in the middle of nowhere or a minor file like readme.txt

All good ideas. I too have wondered about archiving my old disk-based games. Some of them I have found cracked versions on abondonware sites. I consider this an acceptable solution since I already paid for the game.
Unfortunately, what do I do about games on 5-1/4" floppies? I haven't had a drive for that size in years. Anybody out there have one gathering dust in a closet? Is there some way to rescue these artifacts?

As it is very time consuming I would first check if you can find copies on Abandon ware sites.
Also check if your game was also available on the Amiga or on another platform and check abandon sites for those games, in some cases these are even superior than the ms-dos versions.
Now with the rest you have left, either use the tips other forum members have already gave you, or post on the forums of Spanish Abandon sites if someone in your neighbourhood is willing to help you with this task. They'll probably have the software, experience and equipment to help you out and hey you might make some new friends.

Tried ebay I assume? I used to have a 5.25 and 3.5 drive in one convenient hardly ever used unit. Only ever got it because my sister found me a copy of Red Storm Rising but it was on 5.25. Maybe you could find something similar. The problem you'll likely have is to actually hook the bastard up to a modern motherboard.
In fact you can get them on ebay. The links to ebay won't work so you'll have to look up the item numbers
270336585358
120370463285
that second one is near identical to my old one, the only difference is the eject mechanism for the 5.25, the one I had had the old lever system
The games in question may have had the laser burn protection where the disc had a hole burned in it and then the error was the protection. Those things were nigh impossible to crack, it'd be easier and just as illegal to pirate the games in question assuming you could find them. Torrent sites might be the answer, many of those have compilation archives with loads of old games, if you only download the games you're trying to convert then it's illegal but not unethical...

For a moment there I thought you said floppy... I'm not even going to talk about it.

Well, guys (and gals if there are any :D) i apreciate all all your answers. I'm not sure who to give the correct answer status....
All of you gave excelent advices, I guess stonebro went more on line of what i was asking. What i really wanted was a some free software similar to what stonbro and Rallackk suggested.
I'll wait a couple more hours to see if something come up, if not i shall mark stonebro has the solution.

I think you can still find some Iomega SuperFloppy drives that take the old 1.44 MB size floppies as well as their 120 MB ones. Also I think those drives connect through USB so all you might need is that and whatever program you use to run the game. For the really old floppies (5.25 inch) I am not 100% sure but I think you may be able to find an external drive that connects through PS/2 ....get a PS/2 to USB adapter and find the drivers online and you should be in business...I hope some of this advice helps...
Here's a suggestion : [url=http://store.iomega.com/section?SID=12b076394a15a6b030e1b1905473b535d45:4760&secid=39524]http://store.iomega.com/section?SID=12b076394a15a6b030e1b1905473b535d45:4760&secid=39524[/url]. This ought to help with the 3.5 inch floppies.
There is also a service that does this for you even with really old media and transfers it to a CD for you. http://www.floppydisk.com/transfer.htm

This is one that's paid but has a 14 day trial, it claims to be able to do copy protection
Floppy Image
ahh bugger, didn't notice that was the first one posted...

I only know WinImage which I used in the past.
It's a commercial product with a 30 day trial as well.
http://www.winimage.com/winimage.htm
You might find a few freeware or open source products with some searching.
I did a quick search and found 2 free products, you might find more:
Floppy Image 1.5.2
http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/page3.html
Current version is 2.4 and commercial.
1.5.2 is the last freeware version.
Floppy Image Creator 1.4.1. by Johnno
http://www.geocities.com/johnno_ann/
I have no idea how any of those deal with copyright protections.
Since 2 of them are free, they're worth a try.

I think i'll leave this open for another day to see if there are more interesting solutions.
In the meantime, if anyone has the same problem that i do, i suggest them to try what they say on this site, i found it yesterday and it explains on how to create and image file from a floppy using linux. I'll have to give it a try also.