Iomega Ditto external streamer under WinXP?

[Guest]

I have got old QIC-80 tapes I used for backups under Win 95 etc. I want to
restore their data and burn some stuff on CD's... but have got no streamer
anymore for the restore. Now I'm thinking of Ebay-buying an Iomega Ditto Easy
800 streamer that will connect externally to the parallel port. It's a
brownish device/box of about the size of a bigger paperback book.

I did look on the Iomega website and could not make up my mind: I'm
uncertain - in fact I strongly suspect - that my WinXP will not
install/recognize this drive. Does anybody have experience with this? Will it
work?

I tried to see the list of supported tape drives in the WinXP hardware
wizard but it was all empty?? I do not have any tape drive currently
installed on my system, just a CD-ROM drive that can read and write (but not
DVD).

I really appreciate your comments.

Thanks,
Thomas
from Zurich, Switzerland

 

[Guest]

Here is one of the currently possible Ebay auctions for this Ditto I'm
thinking of:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8736420121&sspagename=ADME:B:AAQ:US:1&rd=1

 

[Yves Leclerc]

I have got old QIC-80 tapes I used for backups under Win 95 etc. I want to
restore their data and burn some stuff on CD's... but have got no streamer
anymore for the restore. Now I'm thinking of Ebay-buying an Iomega Ditto Easy
800 streamer that will connect externally to the parallel port. It's a
brownish device/box of about the size of a bigger paperback book.

I did look on the Iomega website and could not make up my mind: I'm
uncertain - in fact I strongly suspect - that my WinXP will not
install/recognize this drive. Does anybody have experience with this? Will it
work?

I tried to see the list of supported tape drives in the WinXP hardware
wizard but it was all empty?? I do not have any tape drive currently
installed on my system, just a CD-ROM drive that can read and write (but not
DVD).

I really appreciate your comments.

Thanks,
Thomas
from Zurich, Switzerland

XP does not like most parallel port devices, other than printers. Most
parallel port tape/hard drives require direct access to the parallel port in
order to send the device controls.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Yves for coming back here so quickly. So your recommendation would be
to rather pass on this one, huh? Well I do understand your point about direct
access to the parallel port.

Would you have another suggestion? Get an internal tape that connects on the
floppy disk cable? I know this will be rather slow (I had that in my old PC),
but if it works... it really is for one occasion only until I have burnt a
few CD's of the old files.

You know, most worrisome I find that the WinXP hardware wizard does not list
ANY supported tape drive, so if your tape does not come with software then
you are kinda screwed anyway... I guess I may scrap the idea alltogether and
may buy an older 486 machine or Pentium II or so, unless you guys know a good
trick still. Again, most grateful for any ideas or suggestions. Thanks!

 

[GTS]

XP doesn't support tape drives with floppy controller connections. It does
support many older tape drives on IDE. That or a USB drive would be the
best solution. You would also need software able to read the appropriate
tape format.
Perhaps you could find a local service place to do a one time extraction vs.
spending money on tape drives and software?
Good luck.

 

[Guest]

Thanks GTS.
Yes, I have already accepted that a restore of my old data is a bit painful
one way or the other. Data recovery from 3rd party is one possibility
(haven't looked into that yet) or I will temporarily reinstall an older
Windows version 95/98 to get the streamer to read the tapes.

Again thanks for your time and good advice. Best greetings,
Thomas

 

[GTS]

You're welcome.