• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Need 64 bit driver for IBM/Exabyte/Tandberg VXA-2 tape drive

RussBlakeman

Experienced Member
Joined
May 22, 2011
Messages
100
Location
Clarkson, KY USA
I have a 32 bit driver for it but of course, being the PITA that Windows 10 64 bit is, it won't use the 32 bit driver in a 64 bit OS. I currently have a partition of Win10 32 bit along with my normal Win10 64 bit and my Adaptec 29160N controller works in both as there are still Adaptec drivers out there but of course Tandberg now owns the Exabyte brand that made the drives for IBM and others and doesn't support the older tape drives. If I can get a 64 bit driver for the VXA-2 tape unit I can use it in the 64 bit version of the OS and get rid of the 32 bit partition and give that space to the 64 bit partition. If not then surely I can change from 64 to 32 to do the tape backups once a month but it would be nice to not need the 32 bit version.
 
Hmmm, I've always used the generic SCSI tape drivers in Linux with my Exabytes. Perhaps the same thing exists in Windows.
I havent found any so far, was hoping someone might know of a source. I also run a Linux Mint partition but haven't used it enough to work with drivers for hardware in Linux yet
 
The thing in your favor is that SCSI tape units are governed by a well-defined ANSI command set.

I routinely get all sorts of strange tapes, including SCSI-interfaced units. One tool that I find indispensable is the Linux "scsitape" package. It operates at a very low level.

My most recent 8mm adventure involved some sort of data collection tape, where a short record preceded a block of much longer records, followed by a tapemark--repeat to end of tape.

Using regular tape utilities like mt and dd would have been much more difficult.
 
Back
Top