Backups cannot be appended, but existing backup sets still usable

[fuzzyocelot]

Hi everyone!

I have a question regarding a backup failure.

SQL Instances on Windows 2003 server:
2 instances of SQL Server 2000 SP3a
1 instance of SQL Server 2005 SP2

We ran out of disk space on the drive where the backup files reside. So the backup jobs failed on all three instances. I freed up space on the drive and re-ran the backup jobs. The jobs then ran fine. However, I received an error when I re-ran one backup job on one of the SQL 2000 instances. This is the error:

2007-10-22 09:10:47.59 spid68 The backup data in 'D:\ Backups\MyDb.dat' is incorrectly formatted. Backups cannot be appended, but existing backup sets may still be usable.

2007-10-22 09:10:47.62 backup BACKUP failed to complete the command BACKUP DATABASE MyDb TO DISK = N'D:\Backups\ MyDb.dat' WITH INIT , NOUNLOAD , NAME = N' MyDb backup', SKIP , STATS = 10, NOFORMAT

So I re-ran the backup command but instead of using “NOFORMAT”, I used “FORMAT” to overwrite the media header. I found a KB article on Microsoft’s web site (KB 290787) which seems to indicate I did the right thing. Was this the right course of action? Should I have done something else? I would just like someone’s opinion if I did do the right thing.

By the way, there are no transaction log backups (by design).

Thanks!

 

[mrdenny]

If it had been me, I would have simply deleted the file and rerun the backup job.

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000)
MCTS (SQL 2005 / Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: Configuration / Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007: Configuration)
MCITP Database Administrator (SQL 2005) / Database Developer (SQL 2005)

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[fuzzyocelot]

In hind sight, I can see that now. It probably would have been much simpler to just delete the file and re-run the backup job. Thank you, though.