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Disk is offline, Physical volulme library drive is not available

Johnsonngrh
Level 2

Dear Community,

I have an intermittent problem whereby my backup jobs will fail on certain days with the error:

- Media Error: The disk is offline

and then followed by

- [Job Name] - The job failed with the following error: Physical Volume Drive not available.

 Edit: Do take note of the dates. Backups are failing randomly on certain days.

However, no action is performed on the problem and the backup would run fine on the next schedule.

I am backing up to a local drive. Please refer to the attached screenshots.

7 REPLIES 7

CraigV
Moderator
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Partner    VIP    Accredited
Hi, Are you unplugging the storage and then plugging it in again? If so, you might want to look at creating a script that automatically scans for the HDD before the backup runs, and see if this fixes the issue. Thanks!

Nope, I did not unplug any storage at all.

What type of drive is "x" ?  Is it a removable USB drive?

You also might want to check the system event viewer to see if any events are listed that could explain why Backup Exec is losing sight of the hard drive.

 

Windows Event viewer

Backup Exec Alert: Media Error
(Server: "SVBE01") The disk is offline.

This is typically caused by the folder becoming inaccessible due to it being deleted, renamed, or unshared. It may also be caused by a disk full condition. The folder state has been set to offline. Please attend to this condition. Additional detail may be found in the Event Viewer - Application Log.

BE server is a vm.

X drive is a local .vmdk file.

 

Edit: Backup today is successful. Like I have mentioned on my previous post, this issue is intermittent. There is no pattern to the failure. I have googled somewhere and someone suggested to re-create the backup.

If re-creating backup is required, how do I point the new backup to use the existing catalog, so that it will continue to use the existing incrementals/full backup.

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

Since your BE server is a VM, it is likely that your problem is caused by the host being busy at that time and is unable to service the I/O request of the BE server VM in a timely matter.  This is why it is recommended that you use a physical server for your BE server.

Since your backups are in a vmdk and your BE server is a VM, how are you going to start your recovery if your data centre is completely wiped out.  What would you restore first, etc.?

Is there a definite reason instead of using "likely" as a possible cause? Also, I have found out that the error "The disk is offline" occurs after a MSSQL DB Backup initated by MSSQL$BKUPEXEC

This is always the case whenever the backup fails.

Please refer to the attached.

 

Edit:

I would like to add that the error "The disk is offline" does not always occur after "a MSSQL DB Backup initated by MSSQL$BKUPEXEC" It seems to be random as well.

One thing for sure is that the error "The disk is offline" have a chance to occur after "a MSSQL DB Backup initated by MSSQL$BKUPEXEC"

So, why is the database backup causing the disk to go offline?

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

You can change the BEDB maintenance, default 4 a.m., to a time when there is no backup.