>I am interested in writing a turnkey VB program which would write files
>to a tape backup device in a manner similar to the backup program that
>comes with Win98. The primary difference would be that there would be no
>option to select files because the program would only backup files in a
>specific directory which is designated in a text box in a tabbed
>dialogue box.

>The main question I have is how would I actually write files to the tape
>device? If it had a drive letter assigned it would be no problem, but
>since Windows doesn't assign a drive letter to tape devices I don't
>understand how I would select the proper device and then copy files to
>it with a file system object.

>Does anyone out there know the answer to this? I have poured through all
>of the books I have on VB and not one of them mentions how to send data
>to a tape device.

>Thanks.

> I don't know, but does the backup program come with an API or a Command Line
> Interface?

>> I don't know, but does the backup program come with an API or a Command
Line
>> Interface?

>I have found that the backup program that comes with Windows NT does
>have a command line interface, and that is somewhat helpful for one
>situation that I am looking at, but beyond that I'm looking for a more
>generalized technique that I could use whenever I wanted to create
>backup sets or just stream to tape from within a VB application.

>Your message did spur one thought though. If there were an API that is
>generated by some vendor which has functions to copy files to tape that
>would probably be the answer that I'd be looking for and it would make
>life easier for me because I wouldn't have to worry about the exact
>details of how the work is done - I'd just use the public interface to
>the API and let the API take care of the details.

>So, the question becomes does anyone know of any vendor that has an
>API/SDK for writing applications in VB that can write to tape on a
>Windows system - regardless of it is WinNT or Win 95/98?

> Search MSDN for "Tape".  There a number of entries related to the Win32 tape
> API calls.

> Richard L Rosenheim