Backup to USB drive on a PC

[nthnu]

Our server systems only have USB 2 ports. So to test, I have setup a Windows 7 Pro PC with a USB 3 card. I can add it in as a backup to disk folder, and run an inventory on it. The test run goes and reports it has failed.

e0008703 - The test run has detected a potential problem. See the job log for details.
For additional information regarding this error refer to link V-79-57344-34563

When I ran an actual job, it was stuck as queued then it ran and was successful 13 hours later. So it ran sometime last night.

Any ideas?

[lmosla]

Are you on Backup Exec 2010r3 with all of the updates?

Make sure all of the Live Updates have been installed and pushed out to the remote servers, check for fragmentation on the device, also if there is antivirus running on the machine verify the Backup Exec processes are excluded from the scan and then recreate the folder, inventory and try the job again.

[nthnu]

Sorry, forgot to include that, plus BE is somewhat new to me.

BE 2010 R3 SP4 with all updates

How do I check to see if LiveUpdates are pushed out to other servers? The drive has been defragmented a few weeks before. SEPM has been updated to allow BE.

Will I need to install something on the (desktop) PC?

[lmosla]

to verify that the Remote Agent (RAWS) is the same as the Media server you can open up the Backup Exec console click the Backup tab and then view a selection list.

 In the selection list right click the remote server and select properties where the version number of the remote agent is listed. You can then select the Backup Exec server in the selection list and compare the versions

[pkh]

Did you load BE on the Win7 machine or the remote agent?  If it is the former, then this is not supported.

[Colin_Weaver]

If you are using the Windows 7 machine to open a share on the USB disk that is then being used by the BE Media server as a backup devcie, then be aware that in this scenario the media server will not be able to detect if the USB disk is attached or detached other than by running a backup job. Is the USB disk is attached directly to the media server then we can detect the detach and re-attach.

[nthnu]

@pkh - Currently, I can scan and inventory the drive. I haven't loaded anything on the Win7 PC. Do I need to load a remote agent for BE to actually backup to the drive?

@Colin - We use a USB drive on another server and can somewhat get decent backups. I would assume it would work similar on a PC. None of our servers have USB3 and don't forsee a new server with USB3 ports. lol

[Colin_Weaver]

The reason the detach and re-attach will have problems when accessing USB over a share is that the notifications of such events are only received by the local operating system. If the media server is remote it will not get the notification that the drive is detached (until it actually tries to write to it) or re-attached.

[pkh]

When you backup to a drive, you do not need to load any agent in the in device/machine.  

What kind of drive are you using?  If it is a big drive with 4k sector size, then it is not supported.

You should also test the drive's functionality with this utility

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH69107

[nthnu]

Ok, I see. We always go to the system the USB is connected to.

[nthnu]

Ok. We use Seagate Backup+ 3TB with NTFS 4096 bytes formatting.

We have a ticket that was open with Symantec and it came down to BE not supporting any Seagate drives. So this may also be the case.

[pkh]

You can reformat the drive into 512 emulation sector size and try again.  I suggest that you connect the drive directly to the media server and do a small backup.  This will eliminate any other factors like the remote machine.  The slow USB2 connection should not matter for the test.

[nthnu]

Will give that a try and see. What is the advantage of 512 over 4096?
 

[pkh]

It is supported.