Confusion backing up DB

  • Can someone explain this to me...?? I have a 67GB SQL database which EM is showing as ~61GB used. I have an automated full backup job set up to a backup device which is a remote drive on another server. I am having the following issues:

    1. The backup job fails when trying to append to the backup file after one complete backup has been done, and the original backup is then corrupted. The server is NOT out of disk space. I have worked around this by renaming my backup file after each backup - the job then runs OK, as long as it gets to create a new file each time.

    2. When the job completes successfully, the backup file is only ~4GB in size.

    3. If I watch the backup file as the job runs, I will see the file size increase gradually to ~4GB, then drop back down to 0 and start over, this will happen maybe 4-5 times but eventually the job completes and the history shows successful.

    Confuzed.

    -Al

  • Sounds a little odd.  Maybe you can post the backup script. What does EM show as "Space Available" ?

    It would be interesting to restore your backup & see what you get.

  • 4.5 GB

    BACKUP DATABASE [Dorian_Security] TO [Dorian_Security Full backup] WITH  INIT ,  NOUNLOAD ,  NAME = N'Dorian_Security full backup',  NOSKIP ,  STATS = 10,  NOFORMAT

  • You state "backup file" however your backup statement is for a "backup device" otherwise you would use the TO FILE, not just TO in your backup statement.

    So I am asking, was this database backup device "file" created with the sp_addumpdevice or EM UI as a device? You might try creating it without the spaces in the device name to see if this has any effect.

    Sorry but I have not used the backup device since SQL Server 6.5, backup files are much simpler.

    Next INIT tells BACKUP to overwrite any previous backups in the device, so you probably want NOINIT to append backups in the same device.

    Andy

  • What is the filesystem format host that holds your backup device?  That could explain the 4Gb limit. Fat16 and Fat32 are limited to 4Gb.  Here's the link that contains the info...

    http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/Default.asp?url=/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prkc_fil_tdrn.asp

  • Thanks for the responses. Here is further information.

    Yes, it is a backup device created in EM - but the "device" is actually a file on a remote drive, thus my reference to a file. I used to have it set to append, I've recreated/reconfigured this so many times I've lost track of where I am, but either way, it fails when modifying the backup file if a file already exists. I don't think the spaces are the issue, I have another DB called Dorian_Events with all of same naming conventions, and it's backup job runs just fine. The difference is it's only about a 20GB database.

    That's a good question about the file system - I don't know for sure. It's a Snap Server. However, if that were the issue, the backup job would never successfully complete and then wouldn't EM report it as failed? I get a successful report if I delete and have it create a new file. ???

    -Al

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