Neverending backup.

[jsbowden]

I have a Server 2008 (32bit) host that has 120GB drive with 29.9GB of data on it.  Backups never finish, and I ended up canceling the last attempt when it had supposedly backed up 13.9TB of data and had been running for ~20 hours:

While that's a really neat trick, it doesn't actually give me backups that are useful.

[CraigV]

If you haven't enabled Advanced Open File Option for the job, do so and leave it on Automatic. Try the job again and then see if this works.

Thanks!

[pkh]

You should check whether there are am outstanding alerts that need to be responded to. Also, open the joblog while the job is running to see whether the byte count is increasing

[jsbowden]

This was with Advanced Open File enabled with Automatic Selection.  I turned that off and now the back up finishes, but it only backs up 12.7GB despite having the entire drive selected.  So I can either back up less than half my system for a supposed full backup, or I can backup some impossible amount of data for all of eternity.  Neither option is useful.  And yes, it's really writing to tape, but I suspect it's writing either a stream of zeroes or ones or some regular pattern since that 13.9 TB of data fit on about half of an LTO6 cartridge using compression.  I've checked Windows' system file integrity with sfc and run a full chkdsk on the volume, and both come up error free.

[pkh]

If your backup job has the Follow Junction Points or Symbolic Link options on (see screenshot below).  Turn them off and try again.

Is this an internal disk or some external device?  If it is the latter, how is it connected to the media server?