VV Pro and corrupted NTFS volume

[Gordon Price]

I am attempting a 150Gb first mirror to a 200Gb drive, and on two occations I get less than 75% complete and the NTFS volume gets corrupted, resulting in a machine hang. After a reset (TaskManager is non-responsive) the 200G drive requires a re-format. This is a Maxtor DiamondMAX drive on a Promise ATA100 controller card, in a WinXP box using an AthlonXP 1800+ and half a gig od ram. I am running VV Pro on this machine and pulling from a network share. I have run the Maxtor Diagnostics and it reports the drive is good. There is nothing in the event logs until the actual NTFS failure error.
Anyone seen anything like this before? Is my backup job just too large perhaps? Are there any Best Practices related to job size I should know about? I am currently pulling, but the plan is to put VV Pro on the servers and push, so as to be able to use VSC.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Also, the VSC issue bring up another question for TGRMN. Is there any plan in the works to make VV Pro Exchange Aware, so that VV can do an Online Exchange Backup, where it plays the logs to the setpoint, deletes logs, creates a Shadow Copy and backs up that? This would be a great thing, as I would prefer to not do a scripted Offline backup, and currently VV isn't Exchange Aware as far as I know. I understand there is probably a cost associated with this, but I would gladly pay extra to get an Exchange Module for VV, to make this possible. The ideal backup to me is to use VV to mirror all files that need backed up to a network drive on our Backup Server, then use NT Backup to push that to tape once a week for offsite storage. With VV not being Exchange Aware I have to use NTBackup or Veritas to push a BKF file to the Backup Server then use NTBackup again to put that BKF onto tape.

Anyway, crossed fingers.

Gordon

[TGRMN Software]

Hi

Re your first point about NTFS failure, I can only add that VV would not be able to corrupt the NTFS voluke as it does not perform any low level disk operation that could cause that.

Re VSC. Currently VV already supports VSC (it is included in the standard PRO version, no add-on). It can be activated from the advanced profile settings. http://www.tgrmn.com/web/kb/item33.htm
This MS article shows how to verify a correct Exchange backup:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822896
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[WalkaboutTigger]

First, let me reiterate, this is not a VV issue - this is either a Windows or a Hardware issue.

It sounds like you are experiencing drive wrap - maybe getting to about 126 to 137 or so GB of transfer and then POOF! Everything is GONE.

What version of the firmware is on the Promise controller?

See http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?kbid=305098 and make certain your machine meets the minimum specifications. When you originally put the 150 GB drive in, did you need to use a driver that came with the drive?

I hope this helps,

Walkabout

[Gordon Price]

Walkabout,
thanks for the info. I suspected that this wasn't a VV issue, I was just hoping that perhaps other VV users had seen the problem. The drive in question, and two other Maxtor drives of similar size, have had continuing problems, in various configurations (VIA mobo chipset, Promise ATA100 controller, etc). Initially we had problems when pushing a single NTBackup BKF file of 180G out to 200G and 250G drives. I had hoped that multiple files via VV would solve the problem, but no such luck.
So I bought a Promise sATA controller and a Seagate 200G drive, and used VV with no problems at all. Which just adds to my disdain for Maxtor drives. Then again, the Office Depot house brand just shouldn't be trusted

Thanks,
Gordon