Quarter-Inch Cartridge

(quick)

A magnetic tape drive standard popular in personal computers. Typically used for backing up a computer's hard drive. QIC standards are controlled by a group of manufacturers (Quarter-Inch Cartridge Drive Standards, Inc.). There are two popular cartridge sizes: full (data-cartridge) and minicartridge. QIC drives often connect directly to a computer's floppy drive controller for ease of installation.

Note: QIC is also used as a file extension for Microsoft Win9x Backup software. There are many reports of people backing up files using that program before upgrading their Win9x system to WinXP and then not being able to restore the information. As far as I can tell, these reports are accurate and the WinXP backup/restore program does NOT support the Win9x Backup .QIC file format. Several suggestions are usually given for solution to this problem:

• Find a Win9x computer in the local area, restore the critical files from the .QIC backup to that computer and then write them out to floppy disks or a CD-ROM for transfer to the WinXP computer.
• Uninstall WinXP and reinstall Win9x in order to obtain the files. Transfer them over to a CD-ROM or floppies and then reverse the process and reinstall WinXP.
• Use a product such as PartitionMagic (one of many) to subdivide the hard disk on the WinXP computer into multiple partitions. Install Win9x on one of those partitions and then use that partition to recover the data from the .QIC file. Write it out to a CD-ROM or floppies and then reboot into the WinXP partition to transfer the data there.
• A visitor to this site (P.R.) indicates that he has had success opening and restoring from .QIC files by using Stomp's Backup MyPC product. This is an $80 commercial product but there is a 30-day trial version at their Web site. [Added Jan 2004: A visitor (H.O) reports that the .QIC capability has been taken out of the trial version of Stomp's Backup MyPC product. He reports that the trial version of Backup MyPC that Veritas licensed to Orlogix still has this capability. Copies of this trial version can be found at: ZDNet or directly from Orlogix.]
• A few people have had some success running the MSBACKUP file. Others have not. If you want to try, here are the instructions; but keep in mind that WinXP may not allow this program to run as it writes directly to the disk; something that WinXP generally does not allow. [NOTE: This backup program is DOS-based and does not use .QIC as the base extension for backing up files. While I've heard reports of it working, I've heard more reports of it NOT working. Your best bet for accessing .QIC files is still to find a Windows 98 machine and run the native Windows 98 backup program provided with that operating system. Nothing else will work as well!]
  • Obtain the W9x MSBACKUP program and run it in compatibility mode on the WinXP computer. If you do not have the program you can download a copy from Microsoft... ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/mslfiles/msback.exe (558K) ...where the MSBACK.EXE file is a self-extracting file containing the MSBACKUP.EXE program and supporting files. Place this file on a floppy disk, open a DOS window, and execute the file. The MSBACKUP.EXE program and supporting files will be extracted to the same floppy. You must then run the install program. Create a temporary directory on the hard drive and then command A>INSTALL C:TEMP (or whatever directory name you made on the hard drive). MSBACKUP will then run and attempt to set itself up. It is during this process that people tend to find WinXP not allowing the program to proceed. (If you have a Win98 CD, look for the win_46.cab file and extract MSBACKUP.EXE from there. Try it and see. No guarantees.

These are the only viable solutions suggested so far. Please write if you find another.

More Information

• QIC.org Home Page

Last Changed: Friday, January 20, 2006
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