Ditto Drive on Win XP

[MS]

I have data on (Iomega) Ditto tapes that I would like to retrieve. I still
have my ditto drive.

Problem--my current computer only runs Windows XP. Since Iomega stopped
selling the Ditto drive, they stopped supporting it, and never made an XP
driver for it. It does not work with the Win 95 driver.

(BTW, I think that SUCKS big time, companies that stop supporting a product
as soon as they stop selling it. Regardless of whether they are
manufacturing and selling a product any more, there are still people using
it, and some have newer operating systems on their computers, which there
should be drivers for.)

I wouldn't use Ditto for back-ups any more, as there are much better options
today, all of which I have--a large external hard drive, and both CD and
DVD burners. However, there is still data I would like to be able to
retrieve from my Ditto tapes, and I would guess that there are many people
in that same boat.

Has any third party written a driver for a ditto drive in Windows XP? I
tried to find one last night, and couldn't. I did find a program for Linux
(Ftape) that was supposed to read Ditto tapes. I don't know anything about
Linux, but a Linux program wouldn't work on a computer running Win XP, would
it?

Anyone know of any software that would work to read the Ditto drive in Win
XP?

The same drive was sold by Sony as the "Storstation". Did that have separate
software, or did it just use the Iomega software? Has that software perhaps
been updated for XP? If so, where can one obtain it?

Any current tape drives (hopefully not expensive) that can read Ditto tapes,
that work with Win XP?

Thanks to anyone who can help with this.

 

[Will Dormann]

Has any third party written a driver for a ditto drive in Windows XP? I
tried to find one last night, and couldn't. I did find a program for Linux
(Ftape) that was supposed to read Ditto tapes. I don't know anything about
Linux, but a Linux program wouldn't work on a computer running Win XP, would
it?

It's also important to consider the software used to create the tape
archive. While Linux may be able to access the tape and the data on
it, it may be in a format that it does not understand.

Your best bet may be to set up a Win9x machine with the Ditto software
so that you can restore your data. Or use the ditto rescue disk on a
"disposable" machine, if the Ditto drive came with some sort of means
for bare metal recovery.

This software says it supports reading data from ditto drives, but I
can't say whether or not it will work for you.
http://www.raxco.nl/windows/ssi/file_rescue.htm


-WD