December 7, 2004 at 10:04 am
I have a SQL backup job set to create a backup file on a USB disk drive. The backup fails with an error indicating a write failure to the device - Disk drive is full. There is plenty of room available on the disk to accommodate this backup. I have copied files of greater size to this same device and had no failure. It seems to be a function of the SQL backup. The job log indicates it gets 80% done and fails. Does anyone know what might be the issue?
December 8, 2004 at 7:11 am
I would try and back up to a physical disk then copy the .bak file to your USB drive. It could be that the I/O speed of the USB drive is too slow to keep up with SQL Backup and is causing errors.
December 8, 2004 at 8:45 am
I would agree. I have never had good luck using network or USB devices to directly backup SQL Server databases. When using network storage, the backups would appear to complete. But, upon trying to restore, I find that the file is corrupt.
I always backup to a direct attached or SAN drives first then copy the file to other devices.
- Jay
December 8, 2004 at 4:17 pm
Check your USB drive is formatted with NTFS. Most USB drives come formatted as FAT16 or FAT32. If your not using NTFS, there's a 2GB file limitation, which windows will report as a 'Drive full' error message. This is of course assuming that your backup is bigger than 2GB, and your drive is bigger than 2GB.
Like the others though, I would backup directly to raid disks on the server, and if need be copy the file to the USB drive.
Julian Kuiters
juliankuiters.id.au
December 9, 2004 at 8:45 am
Thanks to all. I appreciate the suggestions. I will resort to backing up SQL to traditional disk drives and copying the backup file to the external USB drive.
December 9, 2004 at 12:11 pm
One other thing to check...in Enterprise Manager, expand down to your database. Right click on the database, select View>Taskpad. Scroll down on the right pane until you see the two bars that show the size of the database.
The top bar shows how big the "database" is. That's database not data. The database includes unallocated space. When you do a backup it includes that unallocated space. Why? Unallocated space is not free space. It is space that is dedicated to SQL Server and nothing else, but right now it's unused. So, since it's dedicated space for SQL Server - it gets backed up.
Are you taking that unallocated space into consideration when you are backing up your 'database'?
-SQLBill
December 9, 2004 at 10:22 pm
I ran into the same issue and was able to resolve by upgrading to usb 2.0 cards that have much greater throughput.
Thanks - Jamey Humphry
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