System state backup failing (only) win2k3 sp2 AD BE2012

[dbiddle]

BE 14.0 rev 1798 32bit

Trying to backup active directory server running windows server 2003 sp2 32 bit with agent version 14.0 1798

D2D backup: Physical volumes backup but system state does not

D2T backup: System state backup will complete if backing up to tape.

Backup volume is 4TB and issue is exactly like this article:

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH65586

This article says "Issue has been taken care on Backup Exec 2010 R3 SP2"

I think it's back for 2012!

Going to try the VSS rollup update that I missed: KB940349 to see if that helps.

[pkh]

You got to reformat your disk to 512KB blocksize to resolve your problem.

[Colin_Weaver]

If your 4TB volume is using a 4k sector size then that is not officially supported by Microsoft unless you are running Windows 2012 and we do not yet suport Windows 2012. Note: Typically we are seeing USB disks above 2TB preformatted with 4K sector sizes.

A 4k sector size on a disk storage location is documented elsewhere as causing issues for Backup Exec GRT processes. You have to change it to 512 or 512e (reformat the volume)

If however it is a 512byte sector size then please log a formal support case as just because your symptoms look like that old (non-BE 2012 article) does NOT mean that the root cause is the same and we will need to investigate.

[dbiddle]

J is my target volume and "fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo J:" returns 4096 so you are correct, 4k sector size.

Makes sense too, it seems that the strange errors were introduced when I started backing up to that volume.

What confused me was that some jobs would be fine on the same server and others would fail using the same target so I didn't even think the target was the issue.

Thank you both for your help! I'll reformat and break it into smaller target volumes. Looks like 512 sector size yields a max of 2TB.