Problems with DAT72 drive
Some time ago, I found a HP DAT72 with some cassettes in a goodwill. Since it was cheap and I'm interested in such pieces of IT stuff, I bought it. I plugged it in at home and it seems to work (it is quite loud while being used). So the next step would be to read/write data from it over the USB cable that is mounted to the back of the unit, but I don't know how to do that, and searching on the internet didn't give me many usable results.
Some facts that might be helpful:
OS: Windows 7 Home
Connnection: USB
Format: DAT72
The HP L&TT software recognizes the drive, but there are no options for data management available.
Thanks in advance for any directions!
Posted Dec 3, 2011, 8:58 PM UTC · edited
11
you need software capable of reading/writing data from streaming devices. the normal storage devices are block storage, they are accessed in a different manner.
since you're using windows 7 you're out of luck. microsoft had built-in support for streamers until windows server 2003, and i believe XP had it too. the windows backup utility was able to use the streaming devices but since server 2008/win 7 this is no longer the case. you need commercial software now. i'm currently in a similar situation with a server i updated; still haven't found any free software.
linux on the other hand supports these devices as well so if you don't want to use old windows versions, you could just install linux in a VM and since your streamer has USB you can simply forward the usb connection into your VM and access is through linux. this way you don't have to buy or pirate sofware, plus you get to play with linux :)