Windows Server 2012 Essentials using Windows Server Backup to back up to 4TB External USB Hard Drive

Out of the blue, all backups prior to a certain date (May 6th, 2015) are gone. Less than 30 days of backups remain. Unable to restore crucial files. Credibility at stake.

Also, modifying backup configuration after new folders were created cause drive letter of backup drive to be removed without warning. This may be unrelated but is odd behavior and may just be another quirk of Windows Server 2012 Essentials.

Please help as I get the feeling that my client now thinks I'm incompetent when this may be a know software issue.

Roland White TechSquad Computer Services Atlanta Georgia USA

I have encountered an error message while adding "Windows Server Backup" features on Windows 2012 R2.

Error message "The installation of one or more features failed on XXXX.XXXX.com.  Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Thanks,

Recently our windows 2012 Hyper-V server (which is running 1 2012, 2 2008R2, and 1 2003 virtual servers) experienced a kernel power issue. Event ID 41 Task Category 63.

The HTML of the error we received is as follows

Hello,

almost everytime when i am trying to backup Windows Server 2012 Std. over night i get an error, backup freez and server shared files are blocked. In event viewer its event ID 129 "Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort3, was issued" and this error repeat every second until i cancel backup process or disconnect backup target. I backup to QNAP TS-412 iSCSI disc. Windows and QNAP have all updates. I tryed change switch and qnap ports but its still same. I found this problem on many forums but cant finy any solution.

Can somebody help me?

Thank you.

Hi,

I setup Windows 2008 R2 external USB drive with the Windows integrated backup program, which works great. But I can't seem to find a way to add a Network drive as a secondary backup location. Could you please direct me on how to set it up? Thanks.

I have an exchange server which has 5 disks, lately one of my disks is running full all the time.

I increased it, but even after increasing it several times, it still got full - so time to investigate.

We started monitoring the mailstore on this disk, but it was not growing as much as the amount of space that was gone.
So I checked shadow copies on the disk, and the GUI says to my surprise over 100gb in use. However vssadmin do not return any shadow copies. I've tried creating new and deleting them, but the GUI is still saying over 100gb in use.

I also tried to set the maximum size to 10gb, but it's still growing.

Has someone seen something like this before - it's usually the other way around ( invisible in the GUI and visible in cmd)

How do I delete it?

This is a really strange issue for me. I am not sure what the cause is, but I was hoping that someone here could perhaps point me in the right direction.

We run two backups a night on one of our servers. Each backup goes to a different destination. The first of those backups failed recently and the error in the backup was pointing to the VSS writers being the cause of the backup failure.

Unfortunately, I did not find out about the backup failing before the second backup started. As the second system backup was running, I went ahead and executed the "list writers" command on the server to see if I could at least determine which writers had failed. After running the command on the system, I discovered that the "System" and the "NDTS writers" were in a failed state with a "time out" as the last error. I also checked the event logs, but I did not find a single error message there which pointed to the cause of the vss errors.

Usually, I just reboot the server if I see writers in a failed state, but this time I could not do that with the second backup running.

I was pretty sure that the backup would eventually fail when it got to the system state portion of the backup, but I was surprised (and a little confused) when the backup proceeded to complete without any errors at all. I was even more surprised after running the "List writers" command again after the backup completed. I found that all of the writers were in a stable state with no errors. What gives? I thought that the writers always had to be reset after failing before they would work again. Nothing had been rebooted or reset (to my knowledge) between the time the first backup failed and the second one ran.

Does anyone have any ideas? This server is Server 2008 Enterprise with no Exchange server on it and just an Active Directory domain controller. Also, if anyone could help me figure out what caused the vss writers to fail in the first place, that would be ideal. No errors in the event log makes this really difficult to troubleshoot.

Thanks.

We have Windows 2012 Server hosting 2 VMs - Domain Controller & RDS.  We have been doing Windows Server Backup incremental and have an ongoing issue with scheduled backups each night.  The backup shows completed with warnings and generates 2 log files.

The first log files shows:  

Backup of volume \\?\Volume{5d46f853-5db2-11e2-93e7-806e6f6e6963}\ succeeded.

Backup of volume C: succeeded.

Backup of volume F: succeeded.

Application backup
Writer Id: {66841CD4-6DED-4F4B-8F17-FD23F8DDC3DE}
   Component: ACBCD71E-A8CA-4672-B951-52C1BE8444BE
   Caption     : Backup Using Child Partition Snapshot\FMLRDS1
   Logical Path: 


Writer Id: {66841CD4-6DED-4F4B-8F17-FD23F8DDC3DE}
   Component: Host Component
   Caption     : Host Component
   Logical Path: 

The 2nd log file more often than not shows:  

Backup of volume E: has failed. Backup failed as shadow copy on source volume got deleted. This might caused by high write activity on the volume. Please retry the backup. If the issue persists consider increasing shadow copy storage using 'VSSADMIN Resize ShadowStorage' command.

Error in backup of E:\ during enumerate: Error [0x80070003] The system cannot find the path specified.
Application backup
Writer Id: {66841CD4-6DED-4F4B-8F17-FD23F8DDC3DE}
   Component: 2B4A9541-C88B-442E-9A7A-6D8A27342C11
   Caption     : Backup Using Child Partition Snapshot\FMLDC1
   Logical Path: 
   Error           : 8078010D
   Error Message   : Enumeration of the files failed.

   Detailed Error  : 80070003
   Detailed Error Message : (null)

We had been getting a successful backup once or twice a week which showed completed (with no mentioned of warnings) but now it regularly shows completed with warnings as noted above.  

We did a manual full backup of the DC to a different external drive a few days ago and that completed without warnings and the backup shows:  E: Completed 63.38 Full - VSS Copy Backup Successful, 8/27/13 3:35 PM - 4:43 PM. Data Transferred 63.38

On a side note, we can view the logs in the windows/logs/windowsserverbackup directory but when we attempt to view the details of a log file through the Local Backup Console for any log which shows completed with errors, we get a "MMC has detected an error in the snapin and will unload and then it shows Object referenced not set to instance of an object."  The manual backup noted above that was successful is able to be viewed through the Local Backup Console without this error.  

Any idea as to why this is failing during the scheduled backups?  This hosts a database that we need to have regular successful backups.

Dear All, 

I am using Windows Server 2008 R2 and I am trying to put some new task in task scheduler but it is not happening giving some error. Please see attached snapshot.

I am not able tot create new task in that  

Sanket 

Hi

I have seen various posts in the forums but have yet to find solutions that work, I think mainly as people are fixing their problem and not reporting on the forums how they resolved it but I could really do with a hand to resolve this one as it has been ongoing since April and driving me crazy.

I have a wsb job set to run at 11pm each day on one of the servers we support. We have another 800+ servers setup identically which all work fine.   I have since changed the time to varying times out of hours and am receiving the same results, yet on the days it is due to fail if I run manually during the day then it works.  There are no environmental factors to consider, i.e. the cleaner is not unplugging the server to plug in the hoover on the day it breaks.

This particular server has been failing on system state backup every other evening with the same error as listed below, so we have one evening of success and one evening of failure with the error listed.

I have followed the article on TechNet in the backup operations sections for event ID 5 and nothing.

I have attempted to move the time of the backup, if I manually backup during working hours on the days it is due to fail then it works fine, but still fails that evening. 

The uptime on the server remains consistent so I know that it is not power issues.

There are no other jobs running at this time.

I have moved the target location to another computer and another volume, both of which had about 8x the space required to complete the backup so space is not an issue

There are no other shadow copies on the volume.

I have ensured the AllowSSBToAnyVolume reg key exists with a value of 1

When trying to run this hotfix KB2182466 (I cant post links here) I receive an error to say that the hotfix is not applicable to my system, I have selected the correct installer.

I have ensured the server in question has all windows updates applied and out of desperation I have uninstalled and reinstalled wsb

Vssamin list writers results;

C:\Users\hcadmin>vssadmin list writers
vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2005 Microsoft Corp.

Writer name: 'Task Scheduler Writer'
   Writer Id: {d61d61c8-d73a-4eee-8cdd-f6f9786b7124}
   Writer Instance Id: {1bddd48e-5052-49db-9b07-b96f96727e6b}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'VSS Metadata Store Writer'
   Writer Id: {75dfb225-e2e4-4d39-9ac9-ffaff65ddf06}
   Writer Instance Id: {088e7a7d-09a8-4cc6-a609-ad90e75ddc93}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'Performance Counters Writer'
   Writer Id: {0bada1de-01a9-4625-8278-69e735f39dd2}
   Writer Instance Id: {f0086dda-9efc-47c5-8eb6-a944c3d09381}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'System Writer'
   Writer Id: {e8132975-6f93-4464-a53e-1050253ae220}
   Writer Instance Id: {8d97c71f-3c99-4f8e-8d98-f12f343c55e4}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'FRS Writer'
   Writer Id: {d76f5a28-3092-4589-ba48-2958fb88ce29}
   Writer Instance Id: {0b00d6d8-eea0-4a5e-bb19-a191ffa91acc}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'ASR Writer'
   Writer Id: {be000cbe-11fe-4426-9c58-531aa6355fc4}
   Writer Instance Id: {b55e5b07-d8f2-4da1-9978-27a1d4dc1dbc}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'Microsoft Hyper-V VSS Writer'
   Writer Id: {66841cd4-6ded-4f4b-8f17-fd23f8ddc3de}
   Writer Instance Id: {2ca1b6f7-b012-4717-83eb-40c36af9b67e}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'Registry Writer'
   Writer Id: {afbab4a2-367d-4d15-a586-71dbb18f8485}
   Writer Instance Id: {c34a6bd1-88bc-4754-9083-942951fcd794}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'Shadow Copy Optimization Writer'
   Writer Id: {4dc3bdd4-ab48-4d07-adb0-3bee2926fd7f}
   Writer Instance Id: {6e027fe3-c7ce-446d-ae6c-9066296f34b3}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'WMI Writer'
   Writer Id: {a6ad56c2-b509-4e6c-bb19-49d8f43532f0}
   Writer Instance Id: {631627c9-9928-438b-97ac-ca866aff42c5}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'Dhcp Jet Writer'
   Writer Id: {be9ac81e-3619-421f-920f-4c6fea9e93ad}
   Writer Instance Id: {f323a67c-79e6-48cc-810a-8a361dd35dfd}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'NTDS'
   Writer Id: {b2014c9e-8711-4c5c-a5a9-3cf384484757}
   Writer Instance Id: {a2e668a3-2ab5-4fd9-af0c-907c932f2f43}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'COM+ REGDB Writer'
   Writer Id: {542da469-d3e1-473c-9f4f-7847f01fc64f}
   Writer Instance Id: {be8af33b-1ec9-4a12-a3a8-11e6c5453823}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

C:\Users\hcadmin>vssadmin list providers
vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001-2005 Microsoft Corp.

Provider name: 'Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider 1.0'
   Provider type: System
   Provider Id: {b5946137-7b9f-4925-af80-51abd60b20d5}
   Version: 1.0.0.7

Please someone assist with this as it has been going on since beginning of April and it is successful on alternating evenings.  I have tried all the advice I have found so far online but am getting no further and unsure why the hotfix is not applicable for my system as I am having the problem listed.

Kind Regards

I got a third party software (Evault) that use VSS to create fullbackup. 

Sometimes fullbackups fails on one job with alot of changes during fullbackup.

The shadow copies of volume D: were deleted because the shadow copy storage could not grow in time.  Consider reducing the IO load on the system or choose a shadow copy storage volume that is not being shadow copied.

volsnap event id 25.

 I have change the setting:

 MinDiffAreaFileSize to 3000. 

Something more I could do? Local disk is all SSD. Server is running Windows 2008 R2/SQL 2008 R2 Enterprise.

Magnus

How to reduce the use of large Metafile - Windows 7 - 6 TB hard drive, many files ?

http://108.imagebam.com/download/9Vwle0vh06shE-8skGRRSg/41211/412103755/Screen%20Shot%2005-27-15%20at%2008.45%20PM%3D%3D%3D%3D.jpg

I have machines with Windows 2012 R2 Core with Hyper-V role installed which is part of 2-node Hyper-V cluster. I've installed a Windows Server Backup feature on these core servers. I am using another separate windows 2012 R2 machine (with GUI) remotely and tried to perform a "backup once" on my Core servers and receive the error "the parameter is incorrect" as soon as I click on the "backup once" .  Any one experiencing the same issue? Previously I am able to backup the same machines using the same method before I created the cluster. Backing up via powershell (Start-WBBackup) is fine but cannot perform the same steps via GUI Windows Server Backup from a remote machine. see below for error when clicking on the "Backup Once"

Hi, I'm having a big trouble trying to recover my windows 2003 standard r2 pack with my .bkf file. I've done what I've allways do, I go to backup files --> Recover --> Select my .bkf file --> Advanced --> and here no matter what I select even rewritte all the files or respect the old ones I get the same problem( I will discribe it later). And when the recover program it's done he asks me for restarting my server. So I do. After restarting the program it asks me for my user and passowrd. So I write them and then after a while a pop up tells me that I need to activate my product and he asks for a product key.

The image is with the spanish version because so was required by the client. But the translation is what I wrote above

 sorry momentany I can't add the image, i will make it later

So I click in yes (Si), and then it goes to another blue screen window that asks for the key activation but I can't do anything. See the image below.

sorry momentany I can't add the image, i will make it later

The wierd thing is that I can't close the window because I'm unable to navigate with the mouse across the window.

I'm using as you can see virtualbox to execute my windows 2003 r2 pack. I'm sure that my .bkf file isn't corrupted so I can't understand what the problem is. I'm really frustrated with this problem. Any help would be nice

Thank you for your replies

We have Windows 2012 Server hosting 2 VMs - Domain Controller & RDS.  We have been doing Windows Server Backup incremental and have an ongoing issue with scheduled backups each night.  The backup shows completed with warnings and generates 2 log files.

The first log files shows:  

Backup of volume \\?\Volume{5d46f853-5db2-11e2-93e7-806e6f6e6963}\ succeeded.

Backup of volume C: succeeded.

Backup of volume F: succeeded.

Application backup
Writer Id: {66841CD4-6DED-4F4B-8F17-FD23F8DDC3DE}
   Component: ACBCD71E-A8CA-4672-B951-52C1BE8444BE
   Caption     : Backup Using Child Partition Snapshot\FMLRDS1
   Logical Path: 


Writer Id: {66841CD4-6DED-4F4B-8F17-FD23F8DDC3DE}
   Component: Host Component
   Caption     : Host Component
   Logical Path: 

The 2nd log file more often than not shows:  

Backup of volume E: has failed. Backup failed as shadow copy on source volume got deleted. This might caused by high write activity on the volume. Please retry the backup. If the issue persists consider increasing shadow copy storage using 'VSSADMIN Resize ShadowStorage' command.

Error in backup of E:\ during enumerate: Error [0x80070003] The system cannot find the path specified.
Application backup
Writer Id: {66841CD4-6DED-4F4B-8F17-FD23F8DDC3DE}
   Component: 2B4A9541-C88B-442E-9A7A-6D8A27342C11
   Caption     : Backup Using Child Partition Snapshot\FMLDC1
   Logical Path: 
   Error           : 8078010D
   Error Message   : Enumeration of the files failed.

   Detailed Error  : 80070003
   Detailed Error Message : (null)

We had been getting a successful backup once or twice a week which showed completed (with no mentioned of warnings) but now it regularly shows completed with warnings as noted above.  

We did a manual full backup of the DC to a different external drive a few days ago and that completed without warnings and the backup shows:  E: Completed 63.38 Full - VSS Copy Backup Successful, 8/27/13 3:35 PM - 4:43 PM. Data Transferred 63.38

On a side note, we can view the logs in the windows/logs/windowsserverbackup directory but when we attempt to view the details of a log file through the Local Backup Console for any log which shows completed with errors, we get a "MMC has detected an error in the snapin and will unload and then it shows Object referenced not set to instance of an object."  The manual backup noted above that was successful is able to be viewed through the Local Backup Console without this error.  

Any idea as to why this is failing during the scheduled backups?  This hosts a database that we need to have regular successful backups.

Hi:  Server crashed and AD is corrupted in the backup.  Evidently AD broke, and the backup ran.  Not so bad if I could access the shadow copy previous versions.  We had close to 120 days of incremental backups we could roll back to.   The plot thickens.  The power supply busted and let through overvoltage and blew out two hard drives in our 6 drive RAID 10 array.  Yes.  of course they were on the same stripe, so the array is toast.  I used WBAdmin to query our ISCSI backup drive I: , and there is only one version.  The version that corrupted before the array dropped.  Luckily, we have a weekly and monthly USB drive created with one-off WBADmin backups for offsite storage and everything is okay.

Are the shadow copy "previous versions" stored in the same location as the "previous version" for shared folders that can be found with Windows Explorer?    If so, I am assuming that the location set on each drive for "previous versions" controls where Windows Backup stores its snapshots?  EGADS.  Its not in the documentation.  Our shadow copy folder shares for the end abusers are on the same drive as the data.

How can I have confidence with disaster recovery with Windows Server Backup, since the server crashed and only have the single corrupted AD backup on hand, when prior to the crash I had 120+ versions to roll back to.  Where did my previous versions go?  Its not a shared folder backup, it is a dedicated NAS device accessed as a drive letter.

Thanks!

Hi all,

Windows Server Backup is taking over 20 hours to backup ~400GB.
We had been backing up Selected Files.
-------------
This will back up SYSTEM(C:) (Selected Files),Recovery (300.00 MB) (Selected Files) to B:.
-------------

Windows Server built on RAID 10 (SAS). 

Backup logs:

wbadmin 1.0 - Backup command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Retrieving volume information...
This will back up SYSTEM(C:) (Selected Files),Recovery (300.00 MB) (Selected Files) to B:.
The backup operation to B: is starting.
Creating a shadow copy of the volumes specified for backup...
Please wait while files to backup for volume SYSTEM(C:) are identified.
This might take several minutes.
Creating a shadow copy of the volumes specified for backup...
Please wait while files to backup for volume SYSTEM(C:) are identified.
This might take several minutes.
Creating a shadow copy of the volumes specified for backup...
Please wait while files to backup for volume SYSTEM(C:) are identified.
This might take several minutes.
Creating a shadow copy of the volumes specified for backup...
Please wait while files to backup for volume SYSTEM(C:) are identified.
This might take several minutes.
Creating a shadow copy of the volumes specified for backup...
Please wait while files to backup for volume SYSTEM(C:) are identified.
This might take several minutes.
Creating a shadow copy of the volumes specified for backup...
Please wait while files to backup for volume SYSTEM(C:) are identified.
This might take several minutes.
Creating a shadow copy of the volumes specified for backup...
Please wait while files to backup for volume SYSTEM(C:) are identified.
This might take several minutes.
Creating a shadow copy of the volumes specified for backup...
Please wait while files to backup for volume SYSTEM(C:) are identified.
This might take several minutes.
Creating a shadow copy of the volumes specified for backup...
Please wait while files to backup for volume SYSTEM(C:) are identified.
This might take several minutes.
Windows Server Backup is updating the existing backup to remove files that have
been deleted from your server since the last backup.
This might take a few minutes.
Scanning the file system...
Please wait while files to backup for volume SYSTEM(C:) are identified.
This might take several minutes.
Found (0) files.
Scanning the file system...
Found (0) files.
Scanning the file system...
Found (0) files.
Scanning the file system...
Found (0) files.
Scanning the file system...
Found (0) files.
Scanning the file system...
Found (0) files.
Scanning the file system...
Found (0) files.
Scanning the file system...
Found (0) files.
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Found (0) files.
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Found (0) files.
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Found (0) files.
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...

Best Regards, Andrei ...
Microsoft Certified Professional