urza311 Posted August 4, 2008 Report Share Posted August 4, 2008 I have a station (Asus P5GD2-X mobo, 4G RAM, Sony AIT-i200ST tape drive, Retrospect 7.6.111) that had previously been running Windows XP Pro, and the tape drive worked fine under that OS. I've done a clean install of Windows Vista Business and now the tape drive is not visible to Retrospect. If I go into Retrospect's device management section (environment tab), it will show me the two internal SATA drives, the internal DVD-RW drive, the internal DVD-ROM drive and where it should list the tape drive it shows me nothing but bullets. I've seen this "bullet" phenomena mentioned in a few other places in the forum, but they're always in conjunction with an optical drive. My Sony drive had firmware 0100, and I found out there was a 0101 update, so I tried that but it hasn't changed anything. The tape drive shows up in Windows' device manager... it was not recognized initially, and I understand I shouldn't load a Windows tape driver for this drive unless required by the backup software, but since it wasn't working without it, I tried the latest driver from Sony's site and that also has not helped. Any suggestions? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted August 4, 2008 Report Share Posted August 4, 2008 Try to disable the tape drive within Windows device manager. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
urza311 Posted August 4, 2008 Author Report Share Posted August 4, 2008 Disabled the drive within Windows' device manager and launched Retrospect; still shows the same. Restarted just to be sure -- checked to make sure it was still disabled, which it was -- then launched Retrospect. Still shows up just as bullets. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted August 4, 2008 Report Share Posted August 4, 2008 Retrospect is getting the hardware name from the registry. If you see Bullets then Windows is give Retrospect bad data, usually due to a driver conflict or a device communication problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
urza311 Posted August 5, 2008 Author Report Share Posted August 5, 2008 Not sure what's going on here. I moved the device to a different SATA port; that did not help. I then tried to remove the tape drive from the device manager and also checked the box to delete the device driver from Windows when doing so. When the system restarted, it found the device and asked me what to do about it; I told it to ignore it and not attempt installing a driver in the future. It now shows up in the device manager as an unrecognized device with no known driver. None of these changes has made Retrospect see it other than a series of bullets. With the Sony driver installed, Windows saw the drive just fine. The Sony Tape Tool diagnostic was able to write and read 1G of data to a blank tape without a problem. Yet, with or without the device driver installed, Retrospect refuses to see the drive correctly. And the drive worked fine under XP. Is there anything else you can recommend I try? I'm not sure why a supported device like this that used to work is now impossible for Retrospect to use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted August 5, 2008 Report Share Posted August 5, 2008 I checked my records and the only officially Sony SATA tape drives supported are Sony SDX-470V Sony SDX-570V Sony SDX-870V Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
urza311 Posted August 5, 2008 Author Report Share Posted August 5, 2008 Yes. The Sony AIT-i200ST is a SDX-570V mechanism. That is the way it shows up in device manager. I think AIT-i200ST is simply the kit number, including the SDX-570V drive, software, mounting brackets, etc. So this is a Sony SDX-570V with firmware 0101. Sorry... probably should have identified it as such before, but it's listed on my inventory under the kit number, which is why I listed it that way in my posting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
urza311 Posted August 8, 2008 Author Report Share Posted August 8, 2008 Hello? As I've said above, this is a supported mechanism. Any other ideas? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted August 8, 2008 Report Share Posted August 8, 2008 Have you tried a different cable? This problem feels like a possible communication issue. Have you tried another vista system to see if the problem follows the drive? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MRIS Posted August 9, 2008 Report Share Posted August 9, 2008 Have you tried disabling the "Removable Storage Management" service? Maybe it is hanging onto the drive thus denying retrospect access to it? This service isn't installed by default, however it might have become installed on your Vista computer because of the presence of the tape drive, or by the tape drive driver installer you executed. Try simply stopping that service if present. Link with more info: http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/Services/Removable_Storage.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
msnicki Posted October 3, 2008 Report Share Posted October 3, 2008 It sounds like you've run into a problem with Vista's User Access Control (UAC). For instructions on configuring UAC to allow R/W access to your tape drive, take a look at the vistax86.com tutorial. Hope this helps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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