Backing Up APC Using QIC-40 Or QIC-80 Tapes
| Field | Computers |
| Went Obsolete | mid 1990s |
| Made Obsolete By | larger hard drives, faster and more economical backup systems (Zip/Jaz drives, eventually CD and DVD burners) |
| Knowledge Assumed | Loading/formatting tapes, operation of the backup software |
| When useful | When you needed to free up space on a hard drive but couldn't or didn't want to delete files |
Quarter-Inch Cartridge (QIC) was a tape storage format that could back up 40 or 80 MB of data, or roughly double that with compression. The cartridges were about the size of a paperback novel.
The drives were slow (originally only 80 KB/sec, they were often on the same bus as your floppy drive) and noisy, but fairly reliable.
QIC fell into disuse as other means of backing up machines became faster, more affordable, and had larger storage capacities. Home users often used Zip drives and eventually CD and DVD burners to back up important data, while businesses often moved to other tape-based backup systems, such as Travan TR-X units, 8mm DAT, or eventually Digital Linear Tape (DLT), which grew into solutions that are still in common use today, such as LTO-3 and LTO-4.