Error EC8F1F62: Cannot find external device ''.

[AmericanPie]

My custoner has one server and one backup server. They attach to their backup server 3 TB external drives. One for each week of the month.

Their backup job is every Tuesday is a full backup followed by an incremental backup every day.

The backup job to the backup server runs perfectly every day and so does the offsite copy. The problem is that every day I see this log for their data (E:\) drive:

Info 6C8F1F5F: Created offsite copy \\server-02\g$\SERVER-01_E_Drive009_i002.iv2i.
 Error EC8F1F62: Cannot find external device ''.
  Error EC8F1F62: Cannot find external device ''.
   Error EC8F1F62: Cannot find external device ''.
    Error EC8F1F62: Cannot find external device ''.
     Error EC8F1F62: Cannot find external device ''.
      Error EC8F1F62: Cannot find external device ''.
       Error EC8F1F62: Cannot find external device ''.
        Error EC8F1F62: Cannot find external device ''.
Details:
Source: Symantec System Recovery 

As any good tech would I verify the the drive and sure enough the file is there. Just to be sure, I even test and do a recovery and I have no problems there. Plus I dont get the message for the C:\ , D:\ and the system_reserved drives.

As you can guess, my question is why am I getting this message? I'm a little tired of explaining to my client who's not technical at all, that the backup went well that it had been tested.

Thanks

[Andreas_Horlach]

Open SSR, click TASKS, then OPTIONS, then EXTERNAL DRIVES. Are there any drives listed here that are no longer used/connected to the system? If so, try removing them.

Also, do you have more than one off-site tasks for your backup job? As you likely know, you can designate a total of 2 off-sites. Check that.

[AmericanPie]

Thank you for your reply.

I have 1 backup job only for all drives and 1 offsite job.

There are no drives listed.

[Andreas_Horlach]

What operating system are you running?

[AmericanPie]

Windows Server 2008 x64

[Andreas_Horlach]

Let me try an duplicate this on my end. What is the OS of the machine you are creating the offsite to?

The only thing I am not sure about it the admin share for the offsite (G$). As a test this on my end, try setting up a shared folder on the drive for the offsite rather than the g$ and see if that makes a difference on your end.

[Andreas_Horlach]

I set up a similar environment here and could not duplicate the issue.You may want to delete the job and start fresh. Additionally, delete the history of that job. To do this, stop the Symantec System Recovery service, then delete the contents of these folders:

C:\users\All Users\Symantec\Symantec System Recovery\History

C:\users\All Users\Symantec\Symantec System Recovery\Schedule

Restart the service, and recreate your backup job.

[AmericanPie]

If I do this will the new job recognize that I already have a recovery point and will continue with the increment or will it create a new recovery point related to that job?

Plus, I don't really want to delete a perfectly running job because of a false log.

[Andreas_Horlach]

Yes, this will delete the history and the backup job, which you will have to recreate. It will NOT delete the backups. You would want to get at least one good backup with the new job before deleting the old recovery points.

Before you do that...

I have run into a couple of issues on my end using the administrative share as you have, but had no problem once I created a specofoc folder and set folder up as a share. Can you do the same? If that does not affect the error, I suspect something in the history.

[AmericanPie]

I've setup to a shared folder on the external drive and I still get the error message

Info 6C8F1F5F: Created offsite copy \\server-02\Server-01_Offsite\SERVER-01_E_Drive020_i001.iv2i.
 Error EC8F1F62: Cannot find external device ''.
  Error EC8F1F62: Cannot find external device ''.
   Error EC8F1F62: Cannot find external device ''.
    Error EC8F1F62: Cannot find external device ''.
     Error EC8F1F62: Cannot find external device ''.
      Error EC8F1F62: Cannot find external device ''.
       Error EC8F1F62: Cannot find external device ''.
        Error EC8F1F62: Cannot find external device ''.
Details:
Source: Symantec System Recovery

[AmericanPie]

Khaled. You obviously didn't read this poste from the beginning.

[Khalid_Mashaykh]

AmericanPie Hello

Actually Yes I just read the first comment , it was midnight here. sorry for that.

However , can you advise if volume E is a part of same HDD of C & D. did you try to check the E: drive by ( chkdsk {drive_letter}: /r /f)?  is E:\ a USB drive?

Many Thanks

[AmericanPie]

Yes it is.E:\ is the Data drive.

Again, if you did, you would see this "The backup job to the backup server runs perfectly "

[criley]

First question; are you running SP1 for SSR 2011? If not, please update to SP1 to see if it helps.

They attach to their backup server 3 TB external drives

So are these being used as the primary backup destination? And then the offsite copy goes to a network share right? I just want to clarify that I am understanding exactly what you are doing here.

[Khalid_Mashaykh]

Backup to a permanent location and use the Off-site Copy feature or batch files to move the recovery points to the external swapped location.

Source : http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH62482

[AmericanPie]

No. The primary backup destination is server-02 which is their backup server. Attached to that server are 3 TB drives which are offisite copies.

[criley]

It's not clear if you have SP1 or not..

[AmericanPie]

I don't think it's SP1. Is it supposed to update to SP1 on a LiveUpdate?

If not, can I have the link to download and install SP1?

[criley]

Yes, it should be available via LiveUpdate.

You can also get it here:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH169182&key=53845

[AmericanPie]

I have installed to SP.

I will let you know if it worked.