Guys I need some help. Hope this is alright to post here since it’s old tech and I’ve seen most post on Reddit regarding old LTO tape drives drives in this thread. By the way I love this channel.

So I think I got in over my head with setting up an old external LT0-4 Tape drive.

I know they are older. Some will argue they aren’t useful….I like the idea of tape drives although maybe impractical I wanted to mess around with one for backing up some data. Mind you this isn’t part of the my 1 , 2, 3 backup plan.

Computer is a Dell OptiPlex 790 (circa 2011-12) with Windows 10 pro installed.

SCSI card. LSI Logic. [Specs: LSI Logic SCSI LVD/SE Controller PCI Express x4 LSI20320IE 439946-001]

Tape Drive. Tandberg LTO4 Drive HH external

[Specs: Tandberg data LTO 4, Half height external drive. Model 3503-LTO, manufactured 2009]

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On boot up the SCSI card shows that it detects the Tape drive. HBA 0

[from screen: ID #2 Tandberg drive. ID #7 LSI Logic card, sync 320, Wide 16]

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All looks ok. Boots into windows.

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Windows Natively detects the tape drive.

I then installed the OEM drivers for windows 10.

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I have a copy of the HPE library tape utilities program

It scans and detects the drive. I can see the drive history and do a tape read write test which is successful. No errors are seen that jump out to me.

Of note that software mentions “Tape drive is NOT claimed by NT and

Removable Storage Manager (RSM) Service does not exist, Insight management agents not install"

It is my understand that HP or IBM make these drives so that is why I used the software.

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All Dell system software updates have been done, chipset updates, bios.

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No errors in device manager.

Device manager shows Tape Drive listed under “Tape Drive” heading.

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I’ve tried numerous backup software and none of them recognize the tape drive. Tried in this order, and uninstalled after the drive wasn’t recognized.

Veeam Backup, Acronis Cyber protect home, Veritas backup Exec, Macrium reflect, EaseUS todo backup and AOMEI Backup. All installed without issue in admin install mode, and ran in admin mode.

None of those when you load it show the tape as a backup destination option.

I went thru all the tape software settings and don’t see anything I’m missing at my naïve glance.

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Of note I’ve tried the software also on Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 SP1 Server. For these OS’s either the software didn’t work, they did not support the OS flavor and wouldn’t install, or would work and then not recognize the drive.

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Would love any feedback and suggestions.