Windows Tape Drive Names

Windows tape devices use the format “TAPEn”, where n is the tape drive number, in its physical device names.

Windows assigns the names as follows:
For example, to dump a database directly to the first tape drive, substitute the following value for the stripe_device parameter in the dump database command:
1> dump database pubs2 to "stripe_device"
2> capacity = 10000
3> go

The Windows setup program uses these device names to create logical device names to refer to the Windows tape devices; for example, TAPEDUMP1 and TAPEDUMPS2 (logical names) “for TAPE0 and TAPE1 (tape device names), respectively.

Note: On your local computer, you can use the logical names TAPEDUMP1 and TAPEDUMP2 to refer to the associated tape devices. However, when you run the backup on a remote Backup Server, be sure to use the actual tape device names, rather than the logical names.

To create a new, logical device name, use the sp_addumpdevice system procedure.