Exchange Backup - Verify Failure

[Matthew_Turner]

Hi,

Every so often various of our customers will call to say the the backup has failed. It fails on the verify and the error message in the log is:

Verify - \\servername\Microsoft Exchange Mailboxes Difference encountered in file data

The file username \Top of Information Store\Deleted Items\e-mailsubject is different

An inconsistency was encountered on hte storage media in drivename

The servers are running Windows 2000 SP4, Exchange 2000 SP3, Norton 2000 Corporate, Veritas 9.0 or 9.1 with the latest SPs. I've tried installing latest drivers but it doesn't seem to work.

The e-mails causing the problems are invariably spam and once deleted it works fine. Is the e-mail corrupt? Is Norton causing the failure? Is there any way to prevent the backup reporting a failure?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Matt

[Dave_Bunye]

Anti-virus can definately make an email look "corrupted" Technically, these backups generally have completed successfully but since there is a 'corrupt' email, they are marked as failed. You can verify this by looking in the restore sets and you should be able to see all the mailboxes and their messages are available for restore.

One option is to have the backup job shut down anti-virus before the backup starts, and then turn it on afterwards. Use pre- and post- commands for this. If this is too much of a security risk, another option to consider is to use global excludes to exclude the Deleted Items folder from all mailboxes (assuming this problem is almost always on messages which have been deleted as spam)

I personally exclude all Deleted Items and Sent Items folders for speed and backup size, but that is a personal choice I made.

[Sharvari_Deshmu]

Hello,

To isolate the cause of the issue please try taking the backup on backup to disk folder and then verify the result.

Thanks,

NOTE : If we do not receive your reply within two business days, this post would be marked "assumed answered" and would be moved to "answered questions" pool.

[Matthew_Turner]

Thanks for the response (I would have replied sooner but I was expecting to be notified of a response by the forum but haven't received anything).

I haven't got time to do it first way at the minute but I'm going to temporarily remove the Deleted Items folder. Thanks for the advice.

[Matthew_Turner]

I don't know whether I should be considering this a bug, but I am. Does anyone know whether this is going to be 'fixed'?

Thanks.

[Dave_Bunye]

I don't think it is a bug since the backups work fine. The AV programs are the ones modifying or changing the files slightly enough so that it appears corrupt as it is scanned... Not sure how it could be fixed.