Tape Drive Questions

[bob4432]

i purchased a conner 4/8GB scsi2 internal tape drive used really cheap just to see how they work, but no manuals were included. i have it in a windows 2k server box. it is connected to an adaptec 2940uw card. the questions i have are:

1. should i see the tape drive in windows explorer?
2. is there software i can get that will allow me to erase an old tape, view the contents of the tape?
3. i have put a tape in the drive and used the windows backup to do a small backup, but get a couple clicks then an error stating that the drive was reset. should i clean it?

don't bust my balls about slow, small old tape drives, i have cd/dvd burners but wanted to learn how these work.

thanks in advance for your time / effort

 

[Agamar]

You should first look around and see if there are any drivers available for this tape drive.

 

[redbeard1]

Unless you have special software, you won't see the drive in windows. Some programs did enable you to mount the drive in explorer. But the MS backup won't.

You should be able to erase the tape with any backup program, but there can always be exceptions. Generally, the program that made the tape is needed to view the contents.

Can you get the drive to retension the tape? Cancel the MS backup wizard and get the menus to find all of the tools.

One of the first troubleshooting things is to run a tape cleaner, so that may help. I'd try the retension thing first and see if the drive can even do that before spending any money on it.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: redbeard1
Unless you have special software, you won't see the drive in windows. Some programs did enable you to mount the drive in explorer. But the MS backup won't.

You should be able to erase the tape with any backup program, but there can always be exceptions. Generally, the program that made the tape is needed to view the contents.

Can you get the drive to retension the tape? Cancel the MS backup wizard and get the menus to find all of the tools.

One of the first troubleshooting things is to run a tape cleaner, so that may help. I'd try the retension thing first and see if the drive can even do that before spending any money on it.

i can put in the cleaner tape and it will run for about 10 seconds then eject, which is what the directions in the cleaner tape state. as for re-tensioning, i get a message box stating that either the media or drive don't support re-tensioning. thanks for your assistance, i will keep trying to get it working