Why no floppy tape drivers from Win2k on?

When Windows 2000 came out, it removed support for floppy based tape drives
(qic117.sys)

What technical limitiation was introduced in Windows 2000 that didn't exist
in Windows NT 4 that prevented Microsoft (and everyone else) from supplying
a driver?

It's not hardware, as my newest hardware (running NT4) still can use the
device. It's not security with device abstraction, as it works on Windows
NT.

What is preventing everyone from creating a device driver for a floppy based
tape drive?

440gtx
Mon Aug 07 03:40:11 CDT 2006

> When Windows 2000 came out, it removed support for floppy based tape drives
> (qic117.sys)
>
> What technical limitiation was introduced in Windows 2000 that didn't exist
> in Windows NT 4 that prevented Microsoft (and everyone else) from supplying
> a driver?

As long as you can support a diskette drive attached to a native floppy
disk controller it is also possible to support these type tape drives,
hence there are no technical reasons that prevent it. I would suspect
support was dropped due to age. These are too small to backup todays
hard drives, the data rates are quite limiting, and the media shelf
life is only about 10 years so you really want to get your data off
them. As time marches forward, drivers for old hardware gets dropped by
the way side. I doubt there is a sales incentive for a 3rd party to
support this fading niche. The glory years of these drives is long over
as they were steam rolled by hard drives and flash drives.

Mark
Mon Aug 07 06:32:56 CDT 2006

On 7 Aug 2006 01:40:11 -0700, 440gtx@email.com wrote:

>> When Windows 2000 came out, it removed support for floppy based tape drives
>> (qic117.sys)
>>
>> What technical limitiation was introduced in Windows 2000 that didn't exist
>> in Windows NT 4 that prevented Microsoft (and everyone else) from supplying
>> a driver?
>
>As long as you can support a diskette drive attached to a native floppy
>disk controller it is also possible to support these type tape drives,
>hence there are no technical reasons that prevent it. I would suspect
>support was dropped due to age. These are too small to backup todays
>hard drives, the data rates are quite limiting, and the media shelf
>life is only about 10 years so you really want to get your data off
>them. As time marches forward, drivers for old hardware gets dropped by
>the way side. I doubt there is a sales incentive for a 3rd party to
>support this fading niche. The glory years of these drives is long over
>as they were steam rolled by hard drives and flash drives.


Actually in my experience the media life of those devices was
approximately the same as the time it took to do the backup.


=====================
Mark Roddy DDK MVP
Windows Vista/2003/XP/2000 Consulting
Device and Filesystem Drivers
Hollis Technology Solutions 603-321-1032
www.hollistech.com