I've upgraded from XP to Vista Ultimate x64 and my old U320 controller
isn't supported anymore. I'd like to continue using my VXA-1 tape
drive, but this is a home machine and I'm trying not to spend too much
money.

Can I use a U160 controller with this tape drive? I've been
researching but I haven't found the answer to that. I'm not even sure
if the drive is U160 or U320 but it was working successfully with a
U320 controller on XP.

Adaptec says that their 19160 controller card is supported in Vista,
but I read here that it might not be. Does anyone know for sure that
it works in Vista? Would this U160 card support my tape drive?

Thanks for any and all advice.

"Glowball" <no (AT) spam (DOT) invalid> wrote

Your VXA-1 drive will work fine with a supported U160 SCSI controller. But
please note that Vista's built-in backup tool no longer supports tape
drives. You need to find 64-bit Vista-compatible backup software that
supports the VXA drive directly.

Rob

Glowball <no (AT) spam (DOT) invalid> wrote:
Which U320 controller is that? It seems weird that someone would not
make driver for a controller which has to be somewhat recent.

Well, unless the manufacturer no longer exists but usually that means
that they've been purchased and that the new owner makes drivers for
it instead :-)


U160/U320 is mostly interchangable in both directions so it should
work fine. VXA-1 appears to be 3 MB/s native, up to 6 MB/s compressed,
it's certainly not going to stress a U160 channel.


http://adaptec-tic.adaptec.com/cgi-b...?p_faqid=14790

So, Adaptec says there's a driver included with Vista but Adaptec
don't plan to release any new version. They don't mention 32-bit vs
64-bit versions of Vista, so let's look at the Microsoft Vista HCL...
Adaptec 19160: 32-bit: Compatible, 64-bit: Compatible.

Compatible is the lowest "working" classification, Microsoft defines
it as "generally expected to work with Vista". BTW, Adaptec's newer
Ultra320 cards is also "Compatible", but there they've released newer
drivers which supports the FakeRAID available on some of the cards and
expects to continue to release new drivers.

The confusion might be caused by the lack of Vista drivers on
Adaptec's 19160/29160 pages, but they specifically say that only
drivers which ISN'T included by the base OS is listed there...

Also, Adaptec have a "Supported OS" page for the card, but if you read
the text instead of the title it's actually a "these are the drivers
we included on the CD" list! The page I refered to above is newer and
part of the same support system (and says the same as Microsoft), so
this page is just old.

http://winqual.microsoft.com/hcl/
http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/support...160/ASC-19160/
http://adaptec-tic.adaptec.com/cgi-b...?p_faqid=11120