Backing up External Hard disk with VSS to Tape

[nansbill]

I would like to backup an external hard disk connected to a Microsoft Windows 2008 server, running Microsoft Exchange 2007. The hard disk is used for performing Windows Server Backup (VSS). When it gets full, it will be disconnected and connected to the backup server (Backup Exec 2010 running on Windows Server 2003) and the HDD, backed up onto tape.

My problem is that after performing a full copy backup from the HDD onto tape, when I reattach the HDD to the MS Exchange server, even though it sees the previous shadow copies, I cannot restore data from those copies. I can only restore from the last Shadow backup performed.

[CraigV]

Hi,

This doesn't sound like a Symantec issue to be honest. You're running 2 different manufacturer's backups here, and that's probably why you're getting your issue when you plug the external HDD back onto the Server 2008 box.

Why not purchase the agent for Exchange, license it on your backup server and do the following:

1. Connect the external HDD to your backup server, and run a B2D job of Exchange to this.

2. Once it completes, have a duplicate-to-tape job run to backup the data to tape.

The above would be a much better way of doing things.

Thanks!

[pkh]

As previous said, this is unlikely to be a BE problem.  When BE backs up something, it does not erase it.

You can confirm that it is not a BE problem by unpluging the disk from the the 2008 server, connect it to the  2003 server and then connect it back to the 2008 server.  You can then see how many backups you have on your disk which in this case is not touched by BE at all.

[nansbill · Accepted solution]

Hello,

I managed to solve my own problem after several tries. I disabled the advanced open file option. What I realised was that Backup Exec was going to flush the log files and that would get Windows 2008 server confused. So I disabled all other options, with the exception of full backup. And that did the trick. I hope this helps someone in the future. Thanks for all your comments.