Restore selections not showing even though backup completed successfully.

[Richard_Mugford]

Basically we run a Full backup of our systems on a Friday night with differentials Mon-Thur.

I've just had a look at a backup job that went through Friday night.
The job completed successfully with exceptions with only the following files skipped:

Backup- \\LIVERPOOL\C: Primary
The item \\LIVERPOOL\C:\msnfs\log\nfssvr.log in use - skipped.
The item \\LIVERPOOL\C:\Program Files\Intel\Dmi\mifdb\errors.log in use - skipped.
The item \\LIVERPOOL\C:\Program Files\Intel\LDCM\CI\CIMGR\CIMGR.LOG in use - skipped.
The item \\LIVERPOOL\C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL$MSDE_INSTANCE\LOG\ERRORLOG in use - skipped.
The item \\LIVERPOOL\C:\WINDOWS\WindowsUpdate.log in use - skipped.
The item \\LIVERPOOL\C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\ReportingEvents.log in use - skipped.
The item \\LIVERPOOL\C:\WINDOWS\system32\h323log.txt in use - skipped.

The job log reports that the F:\ drive was backed up and also the amount of data backed up corresponds with the amount of data on the F:\ drive.

If I look at doing a restore of the F:\ drive (which is the main storage area of the server) there is nothing there to select.
All other drives show up to restore for Friday except the F:\ drive :(
I've tried restarting the BE services but still no joy.

Has anybody got any idea why this has happened?

Thanks in advance,
Richard

[Ken_Putnam]

Is the F: drive a separate job, or just one step in a larger job?
If it is a separate job, does it run before or after the other step(s)?

If before make suer that the OPP of the media set is set long enough to really protect it, and that the follow on jobs aren't overwriting the F: drive data

[Richard_Mugford]

The F: drive is part of the same job. Everything else is showing up as available to restore as it should apart from the f: drive :(

The week before worked fine and is showing as available for restore.

Really odd as the job completed successfully.
I'm going to run a full backup again tonight without the verify (1.5tb takes nearly 24hrs with verification) just to see it it works.

[DanielBickford]

Richard,
Check the Windows Application event log for any catalog errors. That's the only thing I can think of that would cause a successful job not to show restore selections.
Let us know what you find.
Thanks,
Daniel

[Richard_Mugford]

Nothing showing as suspicious in the Application event log.

I've ran a full backup last night with no verify and the backup worked and all resources are showing up as restore selections.
I might set the job up again from scratch and see what happens this Friday.

Very puzzling but will keep an eye on things more closely from now on ;)Message was edited by:
Richard Mugford

[DanielBickford]

Thanks for the update, please keep us posted.

[910026259]

Just wanted to add, that I had this similar issue happen for our monthly backup jobs recently. And for one of our servers, the F:\ drive (strange....same drive letter as your instance :) ) did not show up as restore selections.

Unfortunately, I was not able to look through any event logs and see why this occurred (as we did a migration for that server not too long ago) But, in the job log, that drive was indeed being backed up.

The only way I was able to have the selection reappear was to re-catalog the selected tapes for that job.

So, now I have to go back to the other month that happened and re-catalog the tapes for it as well.

Very strange why it happened. So, I also will be paying more attention to the full backups, especially since I have a monthly backup next week!

Good luck to you.

Brian