Well, the curmudgeon in me wants to know if this is production data. If it is on a production system, how important is your data, and how painful will it be if your data is lost? Is peace of mind worth the cost of investing in a proven backup solution with tape?
With that said, I typically use a 2 tiered backup strategy to reduce my exposure to faulty backups. I write my backups over the network to a dedicated server with a RAID array, then I copy them to tape once per day. I design my backup scripts to keep two days worth of backups on disk, which gives me pretty good restore times when it becomes necessary. It has gotten even better since I installed Sql LiteSpeed at my larger sites.
This an overly simplified answer to a serious question, but hopefully it will give you something to think about.
Kevin Martin
Sr. Database Engineer
Multimedia Games, Inc.
-----Original Message-----
From: Greg Normandin [mailto:mssqldba-ezmlmshield-x97572989.[Email address protected]
Sent: Friday, October 29, 2004 4:52 PM
To: LazyDBA Discussion
Subject: OT: Storage/Backup Problem
OK, A little off topic here, but I'll give it a try because I know you are all very smart and helpful people.
The computer is running Windows 2000 Server SP4 with all updates/patches. I am using a SimpleTech 120 GB USB 2.0 drive for backing up user files and an exchange server. I simply copy everything I need backed up to the USB drive with robocopy.exe (win XP resource kit) and the /MIR option. Everything works great except for one file, The Exchange Server backup file. It's about 14 GB and robocopy craps out when it hits that file. It tells me there is not enough disk space. There is however at least 80 GB of free space on the destination and source drives. No other copy utility that I have access to works either; copy, xcopy, explorer (which, I believe all use the same APIs) nor ntbackup.exe. Ntbackup.exe copies the first 4GBs of the file, then craps out saying the destination file is full.
I read the MS-KB article q259837 regarding this problem for pre-sp2 PCs, however I'm at SP4. Interestingly, I *can* copy the 14 GB file to any other non-USB volume on the machine. Simpletech's website doesn't seem to have the answer.
At any rate, if any one has any ideas for a work around, I would love to hear them. On a broader note, I'm curious what others do for backup solutions. Specifically, how do you maintain an off-site backup of 40 or more GB of data. My USB solution is cheap and effective except for the one very large file I have. I realize tape drives are probably the most logical solution, but the expense and added complexity are a turn off for me. (1,000 + 20/Tape for a Tape Drive solution vs. ~100 for a USB Drive)
Thanks,
-Greg
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