Troubleshooting Backup Reports

Backup terminates prematurely

Causes and resolution

If you backup to tape, your tape is out of space, or if you backup to HDD / NAS / CD / file, you have insufficient space to complete the backup.

Try reducing the size of your backup by unselecting files / directories.

Additional notes

BackupAssist™ supports hardware compression to increase the native capacity of your tape drive. For example, a DDS 3 drive provides 12 gig of space, native (without compression). With compression, this capacity increases. Most tape drive manufacturers overestimate the effectiveness of compression, and quote a 2:1 compression ratio - so they claim that a DDS 3 tape will hold 24 gig. We have found a typical compression ratio of 1.4:1 or 1.5:1 is more realistic - so you should expect around 16 to 18 gig on a DDS 3 tape.

Most Travan tape drives do not support hardware compression. These drives are "low end" drives, and the lack of compression is reflected in their low price. This forces some users to purchase backup software that supports software compression, which is often far more expensive than the drive itself.

We recommend investing in a drive that supports hardware compression.

If you run out of tape space on Windows 2000, you will be prompted to insert a new tape to continue the backup. On Windows XP and 2003 Server, the backup will stop with the above error message. More details can be found at:

Skipped files ... OR The saved selection file ... cannot be found.

Causes and resolution

This error message is slightly misleading. It means that one or more entries in the mentioned file (eg. PhaseTwo.bks) are not available for backup

There can be several causes of this problem:

Cause: Exchange Server Backup

Exchange Server Backup fails

Causes and resolution

There are four possible causes of this:

1. Your Exchange Server is on a different machine to BackupAssist™
2. Your Exchange Server settings are entered incorrectly
3. Your backup user identity does not have permissions to backup your Exchange Server
4. Your Exchange Server is set to Circular Logging, and you are performing a differential or incremental backup

The resolution for these causes are as follows:

Exchange Server Backup fails

Causes and resolution

Your Exchange Server is set to Circular Logging, and you are performing a differential or incremental backup

Backup terminates prematurely

Causes and resolution

There are two possible causes of this:

• You have a problem with your tape drive or tape
• You have encountered a bug in Windows

Check your tape drive hardware and tapes. If this error occurs with only one of your tapes, then it is likely that it is a faulty tape causing the problem. If it occurs with all your tapes, try cleaning your tape drive by inserting a cleaning tape. Then use the diagnostic tools that came with your tape drive to verify that your tape drive is working properly. (The most common fault is an incorrect SCSI setup - check your cable termination.)

If your tape drive appears to work properly, you may have encountered a bug with Windows 2003 Server. Please visit this page for more details:

Verify fails

Causes and resolution

This is most often caused by a faulty tape or tape drive.

Check your tape drive hardware and tapes. If this error occurs with only one of your tapes, then it is likely that it is a faulty tape causing the problem. If it occurs with all your tapes, try cleaning your tape drive by inserting a cleaning tape. Then use the diagnostic tools that came with your tape drive to verify that your tape drive is working properly. (The most common fault is an incorrect SCSI setup - check your cable termination.)

Additional notes

Tapes will wear out eventually. We recommend changing your daily tapes periodically - we have found through experience that changing tapes every year works well. When your tapes wear out you will encounter this error message, or a verify failure.

Phase Two backup fails due to hardware error

Causes and resolution

This error appears to occur for the Seagate ST20000A Travan drive.

This drive is not capable of performing an Append operation to tape. We have had numerous reports of this occurring and therefore recommend against using this particular model of tape drive.

BackupAssist™ can be made to work if you disable all Phase Two backup functionality. To do this, in your Exchange server settings, perform the Exchange Server backup in Phase One (if you are backing up Exchange Server). Also disable the Reattempt Open Files feature, and SQL Server backup feature.

Additional notes