SBS 2003 NTBackup Failures

Vanilla_Ice

Vanilla_Ice

Vanilla_Ice

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Hi,

My NTBackup has recently begun to fail. The HP ML110 server uses an HP DAT40 USB backup drive. So far I have:

Cleaned the drive (3 times in a row)
Replaced the drive (under warrantly)
Replaced the backup tapes

The error in the log still reads:

Backup Type: Normal

Backup started on 03/10/2008 at 00:22.
The requested media failed to mount. The operation was aborted.
The operation was ended.
Backup completed on 03/10/2008 at 00:38.
Directories: 0
Files: 1
Bytes: 2,551,183,132
Time: 16 minutes and 0 seconds

----------------------

The operation did not successfully complete.


In total I am trying to backup 24 GB. HP Storageworks L&TT comes back clear of faults.

Where should I go from here?

ICE
 
Can you backup to some other media - external USB disk for example. At least then you could work out if it is NTBackup or the media that is causing the problem.
 
can you mount a tape and restore a file ok? is this an internal usb drive connected directly onto the motherboard, or is it an external drive using an external connection? have you swapped out the cables and/or tried a different port? have you tried to backup to a different destination?
 
I know that some time ago (about 6 months) I successfully backed up to a hard disk.

Might give that another try tonight.

Any ideas on how much free space c: requires for the backup to finish successfully? Got about 2 GB free at the moment. Had wondered if that was the issue...


Cheers,

ICE
 
atomiser said:
can you mount a tape and restore a file ok? is this an internal usb drive connected directly onto the motherboard, or is it an external drive using an external connection? have you swapped out the cables and/or tried a different port? have you tried to backup to a different destination?
Click to expand...


Haven't tried as assumed the backup had failed

Internal drive, connected to motherboard header.

No

See above.

Cheers,

ICE
 
I've had that exact same error when there hasn't been enough space on the tape to complete the backup 'The requested media failed to mount. The operation was aborted.' seems to be the generic, albeit, misleading error that comes up for everthing with ntbackup.

Double check the size of your data again, and contrast with tape/backup capacity.
Turn hardware/software compression off.
Try a different brand of tape (if you haven't already).
Try doing a backup to local disk, does the backup operation complete successfully?
 
Downloading SP2 at the moment. Includes the hotfix for compression not being turned on.

Bit strange as this backup had been working for some time.

(The backup created on a the hard disk was 24.3 GB - So very little compression is needed on a DAT40 right?)

I'll report back.

Cheers,

ICE
 
Which part of the back log did you show? Where about's in the backup routine did it fail - ie did it backup C: ok and fail on SYSTEM STATE?
Remember when calculating the backup size for SBS 2003 double the Exchange DB size, as this is backed up twice (once by the Exchange Directory and once by the Storage group).
If your running the SBS backup, remember this runs with Compression Enabled by default..... and expect to get about 26GB on a DAT40.. The 40GB COMPRESSED limit is only a very best case, you will never get that in the real world....
Think its time to remove some old files and Logs from the server and save some space on the backup....

Take a look at deleting some of old SMTP logs, and also MOVE the NTUNINSTALL files to another directory and exclude that from the backup to save some space..


Rob
 
Try backing up less data say under 20Gb, in order to backup 24Gb on a DAT40 tape youll need hardware compression (Software compression is useless as a side note) in combination with a device and software that supports it.

Personally you should never exceed the native capacity of a tape, unfortunately for yourself NTBackup fails misserably at both hardware and software compression.

Id recommend using either a DAT drive with more capacity like a DAT 72/160 or upgrading to an AIT drive
 
Last edited:
As above when we used 20/40 tapes on multiple sites found that 24ish was the real world limit before running onto a 2nd tape and that was using ARCserve, as stated compression is pretty poor, I think the suggestion above to pick up a cheap dat72 2nd hand is a good idea,
 
Thanks guys.

I have just removed a further couple of GB's of data. Hopefully this will be enough for now, otherwise I shall look in to a new drive.

Cheers,

ICE
 
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