If anybody out there is running NetWare 6.5 and was disappointed with the slow performance of external USB drives, I have good news.

Service Pack 8, that has just recently come out of public beta, fixes the performance problem.

NetWare 6.5 is also known as Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 (the name change was a result of their new distribution of OpenSUSE server software.)

Performance numbers:

So the NTBackup program creates one big compressed file. And this little workstation/server has far more than 4 Gigabytes of data to backup.

So anyway, the Fujitsu drive comes partitioned with FAT32 which could only handle less than 4GB files sizes. A quick conversion to NTFS

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb456984.aspx

and that fixed that snag.

This is the software that comes with the Fujitsu drive.

http://www.apricorn.com/product_detail.php?type=reg&id=1180

The software is fairly straight forward. With everything you'll need to backup and restore a hard drive. Features include:

# Ideal for hard drive upgrades and backups
# Creates exact clone of a Hard Drive
# Generates compressed, password-protected backup images
# Upgrade, Backup or Restore via USB, PC Card or IDE
# Runs Under Windows or Bootable CD
# Automatic and Expert modes
# Dynamic resizing to match new Hard Disk

So these same clients that are running the Travan 40GB and I are rather sick of the slow backups and expensive tapes. And now we've decided to move to an external hard drive.

I'd like to have a hard drive that has decent backup software. This workstation functions as a small server in a doctor's office and I'd like to have software that comes with it that will run regularly scheduled backups of the entire system.

After reviewing a number of drives and their software I decided to go with the Fujitsu external drive.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2277138,00.asp

They're having a problem with it. A nightly backup job is suppose to backup a couple of folders during the week and the whole system on Friday. The backup goes to a Seagate ST3144A Travan drive. (One I've had problems with before. Luckily Dell's warranty service is pretty good)

So the error in the event log is the vague, "NTBackup error: 'The requested media failed to mount. The operation was aborted.'"

The Event Source is: NTBackup
The Event ID is: 8017

We're going to try to use this place to promote good backup habits and troubleshoot backup problems. Hopefully this site will become a valuable resource for everyone.

I started this partly by accident. As a computer consultant, I've had my share of problems with backups at client sites. Once, stuck on a problem, and nearing my Google wits end searching for answers, I found a reference to a site called backupawareness.com that apparently held the answer to my problem. But the site was dead!