Tape device driver

Suitable device drivers have to be correctly installed so that built-in or connected tape drives work correctly and flawlessly with Z-DATdump!

A normal Windows installation already contains some drivers for tape drives, so that at least some drives are recognized, but the correct drivers are not always present, which may cause performance losses and faulty operation of Z-DATdump. It may also happen that some tape drives are not recognized by Windows, in this case they are also not shown in Z-DATdump.

Unfortunately, Windows (especially Vista and Server 2008) does often not install the optimal drivers for your tape drive!

Tape Driver

You should not rely on the otherwise good Windows hardware recognition for your tape drives and always install the drivers from the manufacturer’s installation CD. If you don’t have an installation CD or it is out of date, you should try to download a current driver or installation package from the web site of your drive’s manufacturer:

We have tested Z-DATdump with many tape drives and also have them ready in our testing environment to test updates. We have always obtained the best results with the original drivers from the equipment manufacturer.

Note: Some manufacturers of tape backup software install their own drivers, which cannot be used by Z-DATdump, of course. If you already have a tape software installed, you also have to verify the driver installation.

VXA Exabyte and QIC-157 drivers

On some systems, Windows by default installs a QIC-157 driver for VXA Exabyte drives and autoloaders. This combination does not work with Z-DATdump. You definitely need to install the driver from the manufacturer.

VXA Exabyte driver installation for Vista / server 2008

Download VXA Exabyte driver software