SBS NTBackup Config

[Guest Kevin]

I have a SBS 2003 sp2 with a single scsi tape drive. I am running NTBackup

for nightly backups. It appears that the amount of data I am backingup has

grown to a point that the nightly backup will not fit on one tape. Instead

of NTbackup asking for another tape the backup fails. Is there a way to

configure NTBackup to ask for another tape instead of failing?

[Guest Daniel H]

RE: SBS NTBackup Config

 

I'm not sure that NtBackup is asking for a new Tape.

But you can configure 2 Backup Jobs.

One at night with a hand of Data and one in the morning.

Then you have the Time to Switch the Tape. :-)

 

Respectfully

--

Daniel H

Systemadministrator

Switzerland

 

 

"Kevin" wrote:

> I have a SBS 2003 sp2 with a single scsi tape drive. I am running NTBackup

> for nightly backups. It appears that the amount of data I am backingup has

> grown to a point that the nightly backup will not fit on one tape. Instead

> of NTbackup asking for another tape the backup fails. Is there a way to

> configure NTBackup to ask for another tape instead of failing?

[Guest Kevin]

RE: SBS NTBackup Config

 

I am not totally convinced that the problem is tape space either. I first

experienced the issue a couple of weeks ago the backup failed with a error

message in the backup log stating “the requested media failed to mount…” I

removed about 2 gig of information from the backup and the backups ran w/o a

problem until a the day before Christmas. I came in this morning and the

back up had not run at all (could be that I put Monday’s tape in instead of

Wednesday). I am using SBS so I chose the Run Backup Now Option (SBS does

not have a gui that tell you the backup is running so I cant tell what is

happening) I tried to open one of the wizards to see if I could see what was

going on but the system tells me that the back up is running. I can not get

into the NTBack up program either. I can see NTBackup in the Task manager

but there does not appear to be any cpu activity associated with it. There

does not appear to be any tape drive activity either. I am going to let it

run for a while and see if I can get into NTBackup to see what is going on.

 

THANK YOU for your suggestion, if this does turn out to be a tape space

issue I will setup a secondary backup.

 

 

"Daniel H" wrote:

> I'm not sure that NtBackup is asking for a new Tape.

> But you can configure 2 Backup Jobs.

> One at night with a hand of Data and one in the morning.

> Then you have the Time to Switch the Tape. :-)

>

> Respectfully

> --

> Daniel H

> Systemadministrator

> Switzerland

>

>

> "Kevin" wrote:

>

> > I have a SBS 2003 sp2 with a single scsi tape drive. I am running NTBackup

> > for nightly backups. It appears that the amount of data I am backingup has

> > grown to a point that the nightly backup will not fit on one tape. Instead

> > of NTbackup asking for another tape the backup fails. Is there a way to

> > configure NTBackup to ask for another tape instead of failing?

[Guest James B]

RE: SBS NTBackup Config

 

Kevin,

I had a similar problem with NTBackup on our SBS 2000 server. The only way

I was able to get it to take the 2nd tape was to make sure the 2nd tape was

‘empty’ (either brand new or formatted with nothing on it, etc). I had to

‘erase’ the 2nd tape every day prior to inserting the 1st tape to be used in

the backup so the 2nd tape was ready for the following morning.

 

After fighting with this I realized that our data was never going to get

‘smaller’ so we switched over to using external USB drives for our backups.

The backup & verify went much faster, we never run into the ‘media full’

problem any more and restoring any file(s) is very fast. We can also use them

for disaster recovery since we won’t require a specific format tape drive in

any recovery server.

 

We purchased five 200GB USB 2.0 drives – one for each weekday. I even did

a little DOS scripting to automatically delete the oldest ones and rename the

others so I get a 5 week recovery horizon. This took care of the problems and

really made the whole ‘back up’ thing much easier.

 

 

James B

 

 

"Kevin" wrote:

> I am not totally convinced that the problem is tape space either. I first

> experienced the issue a couple of weeks ago the backup failed with a error

> message in the backup log stating “the requested media failed to mount…” I

> removed about 2 gig of information from the backup and the backups ran w/o a

> problem until a the day before Christmas. I came in this morning and the

> back up had not run at all (could be that I put Monday’s tape in instead of

> Wednesday). I am using SBS so I chose the Run Backup Now Option (SBS does

> not have a gui that tell you the backup is running so I cant tell what is

> happening) I tried to open one of the wizards to see if I could see what was

> going on but the system tells me that the back up is running. I can not get

> into the NTBack up program either. I can see NTBackup in the Task manager

> but there does not appear to be any cpu activity associated with it. There

> does not appear to be any tape drive activity either. I am going to let it

> run for a while and see if I can get into NTBackup to see what is going on.

>

> THANK YOU for your suggestion, if this does turn out to be a tape space

> issue I will setup a secondary backup.

>

>

> "Daniel H" wrote:

>

> > I'm not sure that NtBackup is asking for a new Tape.

> > But you can configure 2 Backup Jobs.

> > One at night with a hand of Data and one in the morning.

> > Then you have the Time to Switch the Tape. :-)

> >

> > Respectfully

> > --

> > Daniel H

> > Systemadministrator

> > Switzerland

> >

> >

> > "Kevin" wrote:

> >

> > > I have a SBS 2003 sp2 with a single scsi tape drive. I am running NTBackup

> > > for nightly backups. It appears that the amount of data I am backingup has

> > > grown to a point that the nightly backup will not fit on one tape. Instead

> > > of NTbackup asking for another tape the backup fails. Is there a way to

> > > configure NTBackup to ask for another tape instead of failing?