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Let me start by stating that I'm something of an amateur forced to deal with an unfamiliar matter, so sorry in advance if there's something trivial I've missed that should've been done in my description...

To make an insanely long story short as possible, I was recently tasked with extracting data from DDS tape backups created ~1999 on an old Windows 98 rig. Using an HP StorageWorks C5686B Tape Drive with an Adaptec 29160 SCSI card, both of which worked fine in the past.

I learned in advance that I'd need to run an old OS natively and that it would require an old enough rig to run it properly. Initially tried a 15 year old rig with Win2K only to discover that while it identified the tapes & contents, it couldn't restore anything since the Win2K backup system wasn't compatible; as it was done on a win95/98/ME OS, it has to be done with one of those.

I eventually got a working Pentium 3 rig (no small task in these parts) that runs Win98/WinME fine, & the OS recognizes the SCSI card just fine.
So naturally, now that the rig & OS are fine , it's the drive itself causing issues out of the blue.

When it worked fine (last tried on the Win2K system a month ago), it would power on fine once the computer was turned on; It'd make a series of whirring noises on start and have just the Power LED light turned on (it has 2 yellow LEDS, Power and Clean), and there'd be a notification that the SCSI card identified the drive before the OS came up.
Now, it makes no noise on powering on and both the Power & Clean LEDs are on and fixed (not blinking). The drive itself doesn't respond to anything, the SCSI card is identified by the system but doesn't recognize the drive, and physical attempts to insert tapes are unsuccessful.

I removed it from the Win98 rig and tried it with other PCs and the problem persists, so it's an issue with the unit itself. Should point out that I didn't change any of the "switches" or pins on the unit itself. Even if it's not connected to any adapter and only receiving power, it just stays frozen, with both lights constantly on and no other response, never changing from power on until powered down.

Any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Arch121
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  • I'm not going to close this question because I find it interesting, but this really falls under our close reason: `Questions should demonstrate reasonable business information technology management practices. Questions that relate to unsupported hardware or software platforms or unmaintained environments may not be suitable` Trying to get 20 year old backups off tape (and backups that were made w/ Win98??) is going to be a series of problems like you've already run into. Next up, what makes you think your 20+-year-old tapes haven't deteriorated? – Ward - Reinstate Monica Apr 30 '19 at 00:40
  • @Ward - I'm hopeful they haven't because: 1) there are six of them, so hopefully at least one should be working right, 2)they weren't used since they were made, and were stored in good condition insofar as i can tell, 3) While Win2k failed to identify most of the stuff on them because of compatibility issues, it did successfully identify all the tapes, and a couple dozen of files were extracted successfully from two of them (text files and a handful of docs). – Arch121 Apr 30 '19 at 01:41
  • Also, the problem i seem to be dealing with is hardware related - the drive - and as far as I was able to identify, it's still used by companies and businesses at least in this part of the world (Middle East) and with more modern software platforms. So as I see it, it's not so much about getting it to work with any particular Windows 95/98/ME/2K/XP/Vista/7/8/10/Skynet OS, so much as getting it to work at all... – Arch121 Apr 30 '19 at 01:56

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