Skip to Main Content
PC Hardware in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition
book

PC Hardware in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

by Robert Bruce Thompson, Barbara Fritchman Thompson
July 2003
Beginner to intermediate content levelBeginner to intermediate
874 pages
38h 13m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from PC Hardware in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Configuring Windows 9X/2000/XP to Support a Tape Drive

Windows 9X/2000/XP does not support any tape drives in the usual sense, although it may or may not recognize and display the name of an installed tape drive, depending on the drive and the version of Windows. Unlike most other devices, for which drivers are readily available and can be installed using the Add New Hardware Wizard, tape drives running under Windows depend on device support built into the backup application itself. This is why, for example, the Windows 98 Microsoft Backup applet—an OEM version of Veritas Backup Exec—can use some tape drives and not others: the program itself contains drivers for the supported tape drives. All this really means is that you can’t use unsupported drives with the built-in backup applet. That’s not usually a problem because most tape drives are bundled with backup software considerably superior to the Windows Backup applet.

Tip

Windows support for tape drives is analogous to Windows support for CD writers and DVD writers. Windows recognizes that the drive is present, but has no idea how to exploit its capabilities. Just as with CD/DVD writers, that functionality must be built into application software designed to support the drive, whether that application is supplied by a third party or comes as a Windows applet (as does the Windows Backup application or the limited CD burning application bundled with Windows XP). The backup software bundled with your tape drive will support it. If ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

Computer Busses

Computer Busses

William Buchanan
Hacker Techniques, Tools, and Incident Handling

Hacker Techniques, Tools, and Incident Handling

Sean-Philip Oriyano, Michael Gregg

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 059600513XErrata Page