Removable Backup Drives Problem

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Bill

Windows 2000SBS SP4. Bought an external USB drive bay and 3 x 160Gb HDDs.
Plan was to do a weekly backup of the server data to one of the drives, then
remove the drive and store off site. Subsequent weeks would back up to next
drive and so on, cycling through the 3 drives. I initialized and formatted
(NTFS, Basic) the drives in turn and all looked OK. Backed up to the first
drive (xcopy) and verified the copy. Tried to stop the device so that I
could remove it safely, but never got the OK. I had no choice but to remove
the power and USB cable so that I could remove the drive and put the next
one in. Powered the bay back up and plugged in the USB cable. Could see
the next drive but noted that the drive letter was not the original one so I
changed it. Tried a backup and only one file seemed to copy (later
disappeared).. I have tried deleting the partition and reformatting, but it
still does not work. Am I attempting the impossible here? If not, then how
can I make this work? Would be very grateful for help.
Cheers,
Bill
 
Bill said:
Windows 2000SBS SP4. Bought an external USB drive bay and 3 x 160Gb
HDDs. Plan was to do a weekly backup of the server data to one of the
drives, then remove the drive and store off site. Subsequent weeks
would back up to next drive and so on, cycling through the 3 drives.
I initialized and formatted (NTFS, Basic) the drives in turn and all
looked OK. Backed up to the first drive (xcopy) and verified the
copy. Tried to stop the device so that I could remove it safely, but
never got the OK. I had no choice but to remove the power and USB
cable so that I could remove the drive and put the next one in.
Powered the bay back up and plugged in the USB cable. Could see the
next drive but noted that the drive letter was not the original one
so I changed it. Tried a backup and only one file seemed to copy
(later disappeared).. I have tried deleting the partition and
reformatting, but it still does not work. Am I attempting the
impossible here? If not, then how can I make this work? Would be
very grateful for help.
Click to expand...

Anything show up in your event logs?
Note that you probably want to use NTBackup on the SBS box - and include the
Exchange info stores (exclude the M drive and the Exchange
database/queue/log folders) - for a full backup of your server. Xcopy just
copies files, and that won't help you for disaster recovery.
Also - are the external drives FAT32 or NTFS? With the former, you're
limited to a 4GB file, so if you use NTBackup, you'll want them to be NTFS
as it creates a single backup file. Personally, I prefer tape backup for
servers, but that's just me.....
 
Thanks Lanwench(?)
Event logs do not show any disk-related errors. I, too prefer tape but the
client could not afford to shell out for a SLDT drive and software. This is
meant to be the "cheap as chips" solution. Does ntbackup handle Exchange
properly? What about the signature that windows writes to new disks. What
is actually happening here and could it have a bearing on my issue? The new
drives were formatted with NTFS. Is there any reason in principle why this
should not work?
Cheers,
Bill
"Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]"
 
Forgot to mention these people had no offsite backups at all, zero, nada
zilch! How scary is that?
"Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]"
 
Bill said:
Forgot to mention these people had no offsite backups at all, zero,
nada zilch! How scary is that?
Click to expand...

Extremely, and if they aren't very careful with how they handle & store the
removable drives they may still not have any offsite backups to speak of.
I've frequently turned down jobs when the client won't shell out for a good
tape drive....if they're that frugal, they'll probably balk at my bill for
cleaning up after a disaster!

"Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]"
Anything show up in your event logs?
Note that you probably want to use NTBackup on the SBS box - and
include the
Exchange info stores (exclude the M drive and the Exchange
database/queue/log folders) - for a full backup of your server.
Xcopy just copies files, and that won't help you for disaster
recovery.
Also - are the external drives FAT32 or NTFS? With the former, you're
limited to a 4GB file, so if you use NTBackup, you'll want them to
be NTFS as it creates a single backup file. Personally, I prefer
tape backup for servers, but that's just me.....
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Bill said:
Thanks Lanwench(?)
Click to expand...

Yep, you got it right.
Event logs do not show any disk-related errors. I, too prefer tape
but the client could not afford to shell out for a SLDT drive and
software. This is meant to be the "cheap as chips" solution. Does
ntbackup handle Exchange properly?
Click to expand...

Yes - it has the ability to do online backups of the Exchange stores and
purge committed transaction logs. I personally do my NTBackups via a
scheduled batch file that runs a saved .bks job with extra parameters (label
tape with server name & date, eject tape on job completion & email logs to
someone via BLAT).
What about the signature that
windows writes to new disks. What is actually happening here and
could it have a bearing on my issue? The new drives were formatted
with NTFS. Is there any reason in principle why this should not work?
Click to expand...

Not that I know of, but I've never tried this method....might want to post
in a Windows hardware group.
Cheers,
Bill
"Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]"
Anything show up in your event logs?
Note that you probably want to use NTBackup on the SBS box - and
include the
Exchange info stores (exclude the M drive and the Exchange
database/queue/log folders) - for a full backup of your server.
Xcopy just copies files, and that won't help you for disaster
recovery.
Also - are the external drives FAT32 or NTFS? With the former, you're
limited to a 4GB file, so if you use NTBackup, you'll want them to
be NTFS as it creates a single backup file. Personally, I prefer
tape backup for servers, but that's just me.....
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
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