Backup on external hard drive (more than 2TB)

[abillybob]

Hey Guys

 

Is there anyway I can get windows server backup to run once a week o a Thursday night to backup to a 4TB external hard drive? It seems to not allow backups to drives larger than 2TB?

 

We want to start using this method in order for disaster recivery and the hard drive will be taken off site.

 

Thanks

[Michael]

Is this a USB connected drive or a NAS connected drive? What format is the drive formatted in?

[Arthur]

You need Windows Server 2012 or later to backup to drives larger than 2TB.

[Michael]

You need Windows Server 2012 or later to backup to drives larger than 2TB.

 

You're right, but I thought the only 'workaround' if you can call it that, is a proper NAS drive (such as the Netgear ReadyNas), which uses RAID-X, rather than NTFS which is limited.

[abillybob]

Is this a USB connected drive or a NAS connected drive? What format is the drive formatted in?

 

It's an external USB connected drive. It's formatted in NTFS and encrypted using bitlocker. Is there anyway to get around this limitation? Obviously upgrading the server to 2012 R2 isn't an option at this current time!

[3s-gtech]

Can you partition it down and use both partitions in the backup schedule?

[Michael]

Can you partition it down and use both partitions in the backup schedule?

 

That's a good point - are your backups larger than 2TB? If no, then you could split it using a third party utility. Not sure you can natively do it in Computer Management seeing as it's USB attached.

[IanT]

why not get a proper backup solution, like a tape library for example?

[TechSupp]

Bummer, just got a Buffalo TB dri e for back up and we are on 2008 R2! Oops! Definately keeping an eye on this thread! Is it the windows backup that is the limitation or the device? Work around anyone? Windows explorer sees the drive as 4TB.

[Arthur]

Is it the windows backup that is the limitation or the device?

It's Windows Server Backup. In 2008 R2 it uses .vhd files which have a maximum size of 2TB. In 2012/2012 R2 Microsoft switched to the .vhdx format so they can now be upto 64TB.

 

Work around anyone?

Upgrade to 2012 R2 or shrink the 4TB NAS volume.

Edited July 7, 2015 by Arthur

[TechSupp]

So, so long as my backup vhd does not exceed 2tb I'm OK? Its backing up 2 x 2Tb drives so I can do each as a separate backup but onto the same 4Tb drive and be fine then?

 

Going to 2012 is not an option at the moment.

[DCUK6]

Its the backup drive size that counts if i remember right and not thee data size. I tried doing the same.

 

What you can do and i think Joanne (Sorry if i got your name wrong) is create a virtual drive on the nas less than 2tb and mount this into windows. Dont have to worry about partitions etc.

 

Or, do what we did and just use robocopy, if your using windows server backup thats not in the scheduler then it wont be a incremental backup anyway. Robocopy has extra features like the /z switch that allows for networks drops so it doesnt fail and leave only haf the stuff backed up.

[TechSupp]

Thanks, two questions:

 

How do you create a virtual drive? (sorted this one now, did a quick google!)

 

Do you have a copy of the robocopy script I could use?

Edited July 8, 2015 by TechSupp

[DCUK6]

Sorry TechSupp, havnt been as active as i normaly am on here.

 

robocopy D:\ \\BackupServer\folder\ /mir /xd D:\Profiles /R:1 /W:1 /Z /nfl /ndl /njh /ns /nc /np >> C:\Backup\Synlog.txt

 

Takes a whole backup of the D drive except the profile folder. Only copies altered files which make it quick (/MIR).

The R:1 & W:1 are for when it hits a access denied file like the recycle bin, forces it to only retry once.

There is a option to enter backup mode to back these files up but i havnt found a need yet to backup the recycle bins and was worried it would change the backup time on the files which would affect windows backup.

/nfl.. is the logging options so it doesnt log every file its copied, just the errors like access denied files.

 

 

There is a way to backup files to a dated folder with just the changes. So you have your full backup and then each day you would backup into a new folder with the days date on and just get robocopy to copy these files. This was good as you can go back to each days changes but if a file was deleted you would have to go through each days folder 1 day at a time to find out the last time it was saved.

Edited July 10, 2015 by DCUK6

[DMcCoy]

One thing to note that if you ran a weekly full backup with something like Windows backup/BE/DPM etc then it will take a complete copy of the file again. While slower this does get around some issues with robocopy.

 

Robocopy will not copy a file if the size and modification date remain the same even if the contents has changed. Some applications (such as TrueCrypt containers) have a fixed size and by default do not change the modified time stamp when using the containers.

 

It's not a big issue, as almost all apps will update these details, just something to be aware of when using robocopy.

[TechSupp]

Thanks will keep that in mind, have now got two virtual drives. It more a belt and braces kind of thing. I have regular full backups done to storave already using windows backup which works fine but wanted storage I could backup certain areas i.e pupil files with more regular backups as dont have enough room to do multiple full backups (although I do have 2 sets of backups at moment in two different places cor safety).

All this came about when needed to investigate some files in a pupils folder and found little there, more investigation found there had been little there for a while but she didnt say they had gone missing! Not enough backups going far enough back meant I couldnt retrieve them unfortunately.