Tape Backup and Power Off after Shutdown

Created on March 27, 2016
Indexed on December 03, 2022 at 07:25 PM

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I've got a server that's fully capable of switching itself off after shutdown. After all, a computer from 2000 is supposed to be able to do that! Unfortunately, Windows NT 4.0 doesn't come with power management, apart from the UPS service.

That had to be provided by specific drivers mainly designed for laptops. However, soft power-off on a desktop can be made possible with a Softex HAL driver found in the NT4 Service Pack 6 contents and a simple registry edit.

Windows NT comes with a simple tape backup utility that will be used to make a full backup of the system. I've installed a Quantum CD72LWH DAT72 tape drive in this server, but Quantum doesn't have any official Windows NT drivers for this particular model! No matter... I just downloaded an equivalent driver for a Quantum DDS4 drive, loaded that up, and it proved to work just fine! I even tested it with a movie larger than 20GB, and it backed up and restored perfectly! It's quite satisfying to know the tape drive can operate at its full capacity using a driver limited to DDS4's 20GB native capacity.

Instructions to enable software power off in Windows NT 4.0

In this version of the video, I've also spliced in a section covering the installation of DHCP and DNS services in Windows NT Server 4.0, the backbone of a seamless TCP/IP network. I think Windows NT also has the capability of acting as a router.

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Comments

If only I had budget for such tape drives and cassettes...It would be fun to be using that one utility on *nix as intended. Also the extra content about turning a server into a router made me wanting to get rid of the router of my ISP subscription and turn a spare PC into such router...if not for the fact that the ISP router is fiber optic connected.

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