I've been playing around with a couple of Travan 20, IDE backup tape drives. I find that they can make nice space fillers if you don't have a matching 3.5" bay cover, or if you just want to add some hardware variety to your vintage systems. The particular unit I've been experimenting with is a Seagate/Quantum/Certance STT320000A. It takes Travan 20 TR-5 data cartridges, which hold 20 GB of compressed data, or 10 GB of uncompressed data. Some photos:

I am able to use NT4's built-in Backup utility for the IDE STT320000A tape drives and the cartridges seem to write correctly. I've tested up to 2 GB thus far.

I also have a SCSI unit made by AIWA, the TD-20001, but for whatever reason I keep getting errors after approx. 50-200 MB of written data. Continued use of the AIWA renders the tape drives unrecognisable. I'm not sure why this is. Perhaps I am using the incorrect driver? I was unable to find any AIWA, Seagate, Quantum, or Certance drivers for these tape drives, but on the AIWA jumper sheet (SCSI), someone has penciled in "use the standard QIC-157 IDE driver". Upon looking online for the IDE drivers, it was also mentioned to use the standard QIC-157 IDE driver. Is this the correct approach?

Unfortunately, Windows 95c doesn't come with any tape backup software from what I could tell, at least not the standard installation. Was there any Microsoft supplied software available for tape backup in Windows 95c? Does anyone have any 3rd party software to recommend, preferably freeware? Thanks!

EDIT: Apparently there is a Windows 95-supplied Backup application, however it does not work with Travan 20 drives.