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Backup Exec path limits

Jukka_H
Level 3

Hello!

I have been searching alot and found several articles about the Backup Exec's maximum path limits
for BE 2010 and newer versions. I keep running into the 256 character -limit that is the known limit for NTFS -
file system. I know that Backup Exec is very capable of handling much longer file paths, but I have experienced
issues when trying to restore data from users network folder beyond 256 character path length. Some files gets
restored, but others do not. This happens very randomly and I haven't been able to reproduce the issue myself.

Still haven't found any absolute answer and/or reproducable sample paths that will not work properly wint BE 2010 restore.

Here is one quite similar to my problem: https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/missing-files-dlo-backupexec-11d
-Are there any official limits for path limits? I also searched throug BE Best practises, but found no answer there either.

This is also one of the closest hit I found: http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH208132

If anyone has similar experiences or can provide me some official BE path limits, I would be very grateful!

PS. We are running the BE 2010 DLO 343B17a so maybe this has been fixed in the newer versions?

Best Regards

Jukka

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Laurie_Downey
Level 6
Employee

Jukka,

As stated in the document you indicated you already came across, “Windows limits the combination of path and file names to 260 characters”. The limitation is within Windows and to my knowledge nothing that BE can do to correct it, and not something to be changed in future releases. I would advise not to include file paths that exceed the 256 characters and possibly upgrading to Backup Exec 2010 R3 as it is has corrected many known issues.

 http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH208132

View solution in original post

4 REPLIES 4

Laurie_Downey
Level 6
Employee

256 character is the official and known limit for NTFS -file system with Backup Exec and to my knowledge will not increase in the next release.You indicated that when restoring you have random issue. Where is the restore that experiences issues being pushed to? When some items are restored and others are not, does the restore job actually fail, or does it complete as successful?

I am providing you with the link to Beta testing if you are interested, and you might consider subscribing to the feeds as well.

https://symbeta.symantec.com/callout/?callid=082D2918EC924087AA1F7FB1AE66B8E6

Jukka_H
Level 3

Hi Laurie and thanks for the quick response!

Actually the problem occurres for both directions: when restoring and backing up data.

I have not yet been able to reproduce the problem, but my colleague reported the following test result:

"On the same backup session: Other backups from normal paths were stored to the server normally,
but the files and folders that were beyond the 256 character limit were NOT backed up at all!.
No errors were encountered of any kind, the data simply did not backup.

The restore is being pushed to Network User Data Folder:
\\BEserver\disk\shared folder\domainname-computername -folder, where the shared folder is
mapped as a network drive.

I just looked through some users I knew had too long paths on their backups:

One user has one WinXP and one Win7 PC and he has over 200 files that exceed the
256 character limit (total path & filename together with spaces) on his backup folder.
The latest backup status shows that his Win7 backup status is "complete" but WinXP status
shows "warning". The longest paths are over 300 characters, so Win7:s "users" -folder does not
provide the answer versus the documents and settings -folder. I'm wondering though, is Win7 somehow more "immune" tho this problem in client use?

By the way, we are running Backup Exec 10 on the Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition.

Somekind of "Best Practises" for Network User Data Folder usage would be very helpful in this situation.

It seems quite clear that the paths should be way below 256 characters, but this is very difficult to fullfill
since the Backup Exec already adds about 20 characters or so into the backup path.
"DLO also adds 20 characters to each backup file name, which contributes to the maximum
path length problem above, and can also cause maximum name limits to be reached."
http://clientui-kb.symantec.com/resources/sites/BUSINESS/content/live/TECHNICAL_SOLUTION/35000/TECH35849/en_US/273389.pdf
-Does this still apply for the newer versions of the Backup Exec?

Jukka

Laurie_Downey
Level 6
Employee

Jukka,

As stated in the document you indicated you already came across, “Windows limits the combination of path and file names to 260 characters”. The limitation is within Windows and to my knowledge nothing that BE can do to correct it, and not something to be changed in future releases. I would advise not to include file paths that exceed the 256 characters and possibly upgrading to Backup Exec 2010 R3 as it is has corrected many known issues.

 http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH208132

Jukka_H
Level 3
This is actually the answer I was hoping for. When the NTFS filesystem is setting this kind of limits for the path length, it certainly is not very smart to try to force the backup environment to exceed this limit! Thank you so much for you answers! We'll keep looking for ways to shorten too long paths to make backups works as reliably as possible. Regards, Jukka