Backup failure

Topic

New Reply

Am trying to back up an entire fixed hard drive to a removeable hard drive using MSBACKUP in WinME. Full backup would be a little over 8GB. After processing 11,310 files (4,648,972,592 bytes), the process stops with the error message “The backup file has reached the maximum size allowed by the file system. Please retry the operation with smaller backups or back up to a different device.” When I first installed the removeable drive, I had no trouble backing up the drive, which was nearly 6GB at the time. Now the system chokesin less than 5GB. Can anyone suggest a fix?

Reply | Quote

Replies

How big is the removable drive and is there anything else on it? If there isn’t (or shouldn’t be), have you tried formatting it before doing the backup?

Reply | Quote

It’s 30GB, divided into two partitions of about equal size — more than plenty of room. I can create or copy files to the drive, but I start the backup to a clean, empty drive.

Reply | Quote

I read an article recently that said that large partitions wasted a lot of capacity because of the nature of FAT (so not an issue for Win 2000), but you should still have plenty of space. Perhaps the controller for the removable drive can’t deal with a file (i.e. backup image) beyond a certain size. It may be failing before it reaches a size that it has coped with befor, but maybe that’s the point at which it realises how big the file is going to be. Could you break up the backup, e.g. into software and data?

Reply | Quote

Yes, I can break the backup into smaller segments, and that’s how I’ve been getting by. Problem is that I must then TEND the backup and start each segment manually when the previous one finishes, instead of just letting the whole thing rip and going to bed. Shouldn’t have to do it that way.

Reply | Quote

I see your problem. Unless you’re adding and removing a lot of software, presumably a lot of your system must stay the same from day to day. Could you just selectively back up the parts that change from day to day (e.g. My Documents)? An occasional backup of the rest, when you have the time, ought to do. It would probably work best/easiest if your files, operating system and other software were on seperate partitions. I always find that to be useful anyway, when windows goes into meltdown – makes it easier to reinstall, if worst comes to worst (and it tends to!).
I would suggest using Drive Image as an alternative to MSBackup, but of course it doesn’t work with Me (or Win 2000). Haven’t tried any other dedicated backup software, but they seem to be mostly DOS based, so I guess they’ll have the same compatibility issues.
Have you tried scheduling the backups? It should be possible to schedule the multiple backups to run one after the other. I you’re leaving the PC on overnight anyway, it should be possible to set up for a convenient time, unless you keep very irregular hours!
Sorry I can’t think of a fix for your problem, but I hope you might get something useful out of this.

Reply | Quote

Sorry it took so long to reply – have been out of town. Repositioning data files is more trouble than I want to get into. Also, a few programs store changed data in files with non-standard extensions (not .DOC, .TXT, .MDB, .XLS, etc.) and I wouldn’t know what to move or how to tell those programs where to find their data.

Scheduling a series of smaller backups, on the other hand, should solve my problem. Don’t know why I didn’t think of it. Will try it tonight. Thank you.

Reply | Quote