MS Backup -always overwrite?

[mjbosko]

I must be doing something wrong. I'm trying to get a daily backup going with the backup program that comes with W2k3 server.

The job keeps failing because it can't find the right media ... ?? It attempts to mount the drive, then quits. The log says:
"Cannot locate the specified media or backup device"

Is this due to the media having data on it already? There must be a way to configure a nightly job to know to just overwrite the data on the current media, isn't there?

I can run the job manually (not using the scheduler) just fine. But I do need to tell it to overwrite the media thats on the tape.

I'm confused, and thinking it should be more straight forward than this. What am I missing?

Thanks,

Mike

 

[SteveTheGeek]

Check and make sure that you're not building the backup job with one tape, then trying to use another tape for the next job. In my experience, you need to actually build five jobs if you're using a different tape for each day of the week.
-Steve

 

[mjbosko]

Is the process of 'building a tape' spelled out anywhere?? I would sure think it should make more sense than this.

 

[sbmongoos]

I'm having a similar problem with Win 2000 Pro. Being used as a server. I configured MS Backup to run backups each night to a tape (Travan). It seemed to work just fine for a while then stopped. Looking into why it stopped I found out that it said the media was full. Now, I selected for it to overwrite and not to append. Clearly it was appending. I attempted to erase the tape but MS Backup's response was that the tape was full, again. So I tried erasing the tape one more time (quicker than format) and this time the device simply dissapeared off the list all together and I know I have no access to the tape or drive. No idea what's going on. Don't understand why MS Backup wasn't overwriting previous backups each day instead of, apparently, appending.

Any help?

 

[mjbosko]

I ended up adding the /um switch to the end of the program string in the scheduler - took care of my problem. Well, at least it took care of THIS problem.

 

[cheezer]

I too was frustrated with the backup program, so I wrote a script which forces the backup to work so you don't get those error messages anymore. I'm giving it away for free to other admins who had problems with the Win2k3 ntbackup problem. Go check it out at

http://ntbackup.no-ip.com

Enjoy and good luck!!!

-Dan