windows 2008 server back up

[ian124]

Hi all

I have just started having problems with the built in backup software in windows server 2008. They fail to run when they are part of the schedule. If i force the backup to run it will back everything up fine. If I then leave the same USB disk attached and wait for the scheduled backup to run it will fail. The message says "The backup of the volume was stopped before the backup started running"
I have tried to format the disks, recreate the schedule still get the same error. All windows updates have been run.

Any help would be great

Thanks

Ian

[patio]

Somerhing is interrupting the process...
Most likely culprits are a malware scanner turning on or an email app phoning home checking mail...

[ian124]

Thanks for the advise. I have now changed the time on the schedule ill check and see if that makes any difference.

Ian

[patio]

Anytime...

BTW...Welcome to Computer Hope !

[Rob Pomeroy]

Which built in backup software are we talking about?  The legacy backup, a modified NTBackup doesn't really do a very good job.  WBAdmin is fantastic, but you're stuck with whole drive backups without file-level restore.

At work, we use WBAdmin to create server "images" on a monthly basis.  Well worth doing, if you've never tried.  It gives you a bare metal restore image.  On most of our servers it takes about 25 minutes to create the image, while the server is still live.  Then a complete restore takes about the same - to brand new disks, even.

Then we use Symantec Backup Exec for system state, file and DB backup.  Backup Exec is just as horrendous as any other software in this sector, but a whole lot more capable than NTBackup.

[ian124]

After changing the time of my backups the first one worked fine. I have checked last nights backups and it failed again but with a different error message.
"creation of shared protection point failed."

I have sat looking through all the event logs and got various different error codes all starting from about 3 weeks ago

2155348001 - Backup timed out - I have edited the registry to allow a 20 min time out not 10
2147942402 - Microsoft-Windows-Backup cannot be found - Not done anything with this yet
2155348061 - Backup failed to start - could be related to the time out problem

If changing the time out does not resolve the issue any more ideas?

Rob I am using the built in windows server back up

Thanks

Ian

[patio]

SyncBack has a free version...perhaps it would suit your needs better since you are doing incremental backups...

[Rob Pomeroy]

You should not be getting timeouts, period.  Looks like there may be an issue mounting the USB drive.  Possible, power saving is switched on for that device and it's powering down, but not powering back up again properly...?

In addition to Pat's suggestion, you might also look at Cobian.  Anything but NT Backup...