Slow SBS Backups

Over the past few months my backups for my sbs server 2003 with service pack
2 are taking longer & longer to complete. Going from a couple of hours to
over 8 hours, backups are done to an external hard drive connected via usb.
The file size is about the same size. Sometimes the backup fails totally.

I never updated the server to R2 as till now was working fine, can I restore
my server to R2 or do I have to restore it to as was then update to R2, is
it a painless upgrade, how do I know if I've completed all the updates prior
to updating to R2?

I was thinking of doing a restore of the server using one of it's backups
onto a hard drive of similar size just in case it all goes pear shaped.

Thanks

Bernard

Cliff
Thu Jun 26 05:48:39 PDT 2008

I doubt updating to R2 will fix your problem. R2 technologies add some nice
features (integrated update management, centralized print management, etc)
but won't add any hotfixes that SP2 hasn't already done. So if backups have
issues, you really should contentrate on WHY.

I'd check disk I/O on both the USB drive (could be failing) or the backup
source (again, failing HD, raid controller's cache battery is dead, etc.)
Going from 2 to 8 is significant enough to indicate a hardware failure
somewhere and shouldn't be ignored. I sure as *hell* wouldn't want to try
restoring a server without knowing what the problem is. You could end up in
a place you can't come back from...

-Cliff

"Bernard George" <bgeorge104@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:uau3n%2311IHA.3860@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Over the past few months my backups for my sbs server 2003 with service
> pack 2 are taking longer & longer to complete. Going from a couple of
> hours to over 8 hours, backups are done to an external hard drive
> connected via usb. The file size is about the same size. Sometimes the
> backup fails totally.
>
> I never updated the server to R2 as till now was working fine, can I
> restore my server to R2 or do I have to restore it to as was then update
> to R2, is it a painless upgrade, how do I know if I've completed all the
> updates prior to updating to R2?
>
> I was thinking of doing a restore of the server using one of it's backups
> onto a hard drive of similar size just in case it all goes pear shaped.
>
> Thanks
>
> Bernard
>

Bernard
Thu Jun 26 09:35:59 PDT 2008

Hi Cliff,

Thanks for your help, I've just started a backup to a different hard drive
on the internal drive controller & it still says it's going to take about 8
hours!

If the problem can't be found hopefully it will hang on till sbs 2k8 is out
then I can migrate to a new server.



"Cliff Galiher" <cgaliher@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:7D110C9F-9436-4799-A7DE-E2AC0B6C5D7E@microsoft.com...
>I doubt updating to R2 will fix your problem. R2 technologies add some
>nice features (integrated update management, centralized print management,
>etc) but won't add any hotfixes that SP2 hasn't already done. So if
>backups have issues, you really should contentrate on WHY.
>
> I'd check disk I/O on both the USB drive (could be failing) or the backup
> source (again, failing HD, raid controller's cache battery is dead, etc.)
> Going from 2 to 8 is significant enough to indicate a hardware failure
> somewhere and shouldn't be ignored. I sure as *hell* wouldn't want to try
> restoring a server without knowing what the problem is. You could end up
> in a place you can't come back from...
>
> -Cliff
>
> "Bernard George" <bgeorge104@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:uau3n%2311IHA.3860@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>> Over the past few months my backups for my sbs server 2003 with service
>> pack 2 are taking longer & longer to complete. Going from a couple of
>> hours to over 8 hours, backups are done to an external hard drive
>> connected via usb. The file size is about the same size. Sometimes the
>> backup fails totally.
>>
>> I never updated the server to R2 as till now was working fine, can I
>> restore my server to R2 or do I have to restore it to as was then update
>> to R2, is it a painless upgrade, how do I know if I've completed all the
>> updates prior to updating to R2?
>>
>> I was thinking of doing a restore of the server using one of it's backups
>> onto a hard drive of similar size just in case it all goes pear shaped.
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Bernard
>>
>