Can't back-up to USB drive

[IanG]

Hi there

I'm trying to backup DPM protection groups to USB drives using FireStreamer. The USB drives are locally attached to the DPM server using normal USB2 cables / controllers. More often than not, it doesn't work. When it doesn't the following is logged:
In DPM, a critical alert with the following detailed information: DPM encountered a critical error while performing an I/O operation on the tape Low Priority Servers-00000105 (XX_B100000001L1) (Barcode - XX_B100000001L1) in Drive Firestreamer Tape Drive. (ID 30101 Details: Data error (cyclic redundancy check) (0x80070017))
In the Application Event Log with the source FsHelperSvc: 08/09/2011 23:20:33 | Error | E012 | L1T001 | Unable to write data to the medium. | file://H:\XX_B100000001L1.fsrm*10240 | XX_B100000001L1
In the System Event Log with the source clfs3mtp: The device, \Device\TapeDrive0, has a bad block.
In the FireStreamer console activity window there are 3 entries: 1) M015, L1T001, Data compression is enabled. 2) E002, L1T001, The media drive report the following error: There is not enough space on the disk [C000007F] 3) E012, L1T001, Unable to write data to the medium.

The USB drives work OK with Windows. I can copy a few GB of data to them with no errors or pauses - even when using Windows Explorer to copy data to them when DPM / FireStreamer is apparently struggling.

FireStreamer has been configured to have 1 drive with 400 slots. The media map has 330 10GB tapes split (150/180) across 2 USB drives and the drives are practically empty, 1.81TB free on one and 1.79TB free on the other.

Can you suggest what I should be looking at?

All the best, Ian G.

[jsf]

- Does the problem happen immediately after a backup started or some time after?
- What's the size of H:\XX_B100000001L1.fsrm, does it exist at all?

It seems that H: in the context of Firestreamer Helper Service points not to the USB drive you expect but to some smaller drive. Do not use drive letters. Use the Substitute Drive Letters command to replace drive letters with volume names.

[IanG]

Hi JS

If the problem doesn't occur immediately it will after FireStreamer has used up a few tapes. When it has successfully used a tape the size of the file is 4,194,176KB (there in fact 6 files all exactly that size which looks a bit strange) and the unused files are 0KB.

I'll have a look at substituting the drive letters for volume names and see what happens.

All the best, Ian G.

[IanG]

Hello JS

I have substitued the drive letters for the full volume GUID and unfortunately I'm still getting the same errors.

All the best, Ian G.

[IanG]

Hi JS

I've got my fingers crossed because I think I might have solved it. I think I've been a bit of an idiot and left the USB HDDs as FAT32 which has a 4GB limit on an individual file size. The 6 files that were each exactly 4,194,176KB is a bit of a giveaway! I've quick formatted the disks, re-create the media layout and started again. So far it's backed up nearly 100GB which is far far more than I'd previously achieved with these disks.

"There is not enough space on the disk" is the expected, if slightly mis-leading, error code / message returned when you try and create too big a file on a FAT32 volume.

All the best, Ian G.

[jsf]

That's the error description that Firestreamer gets from Windows.

[IanG]

Hello JS

I know. I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.

All the best, Ian G.