I'm trying to backup 900 GB on a 2 TB volume ( Raid 1 Sata Drives ) that shows up as an E: drive. Since this volume has never been backed up, I need to be careful. I connected a USB 2 TB external drive as my destination. The last time I tried it, Backup failed and it posted a device not ready message after backing up for four hours. I realize this will take some time to complete but I have little choice since there are not more SATA ports available etc.. From my research, I haven't found a solution to this USB not ready problem. StorageCraft is running and backing up the system drive, C: using VPN but it's a much smaller drive but not feasible to use for such a larg volume. For our peace of mind, we need to get this working. I'm tempted to get an eSata controller and try the same with an external eSata but I'm hesitant to try this and still have this drive not ready problem. I found articles warning backing up greater than 2 TB volumes but it looks like that is not our problem. This is my first time posting so hopefully, I am not leaving anything out. Thanks for any suggestions.

1. Are there any traces in event logs? 2. I would recommend NAS instead of external disk. Regards Milos

I can't look now but I remember looking after the failure in the Systems Logs and I didn't find anything. I found the drive not ready in the backup logs. I will take one more look when I get a chance. NAS is probably not an option $. I inherited this mess. From what I read in MS Backup documentation, removable media is suported. I worked out the number for USB transfer and I know it will painfully slow for that much data. I will let you know if there is anything in the logs. Thanks.

Hi, On your Windows Server 2008 R2, please open the device manager, and then find the USB External device. Right click the property of the USB external drive. Check the status of the USB external drive. 1. Please make sure the drivers for the USB external device are up-to-date; 2. Please let me know the policies for this USB external device (quick removal or performance); Then you could look into the Event Viewer to verify whether there are some related errors or warnings included or not. Regards, JamesJames Xiong TechNet Community Support

Hi, On your Windows Server 2008 R2, please open the device manager, and then find the USB External device. Right click the property of the USB external drive. Check the status of the USB external drive. 1. Please make sure the drivers for the USB external device are up-to-date; 2. Please let me know the policies for this USB external device (quick removal or performance); Then you could look into the Event Viewer to verify whether there are some related errors or warnings included or not. Regards, JamesJames Xiong TechNet Community Support

Hi James/Milos, Thanks for your replies. The drive does not show up in Device Manager nor Disk Management so as far as status, the OS doesn't show it. Someone disconnected the USB cable and connected it again but it's still gone. Device Manager shows under - Universal Serial Bus Controller - USB Mass Storage Device - Propertities - General - The Device cannot start. Code 10. I suspect this is the drive that went away. 1) When we get it working again, ( reboot the machine? ) I will check to see which driver is installed. 2) Like I mentioned, I inhereted this as a hardware problem but the person that setup the backup told me she didn't make any changes to the USB properties. Therefore my guess is it was left as default . ( Quick Removal ?) The System Event Viewer shows Warnnigs just before Backup failed: **Source: disk, Event ID 51 - An error was detected on device\harddisk2\DR2 during Paging operation and tons more Warnings ( hours ) **Source NTFS, Event ID 57 - The System failed to flush data to transaction log. Corruption may occur. How can I find device\harddisk2\DR2? I am going to take the USB drive offsite to test it. I hope this covers most of your questions. Thanks again.

Hi, Any Update? JamesJames Xiong TechNet Community Support

The USB drive seems fine. I did a long format and I ran Backups on another w2008 server for almost one week. The drive was installed again in the original server this morning but it was not recognized even by rescanning using Device Manager. A server reboot finally showed the drive. The good news so far is that it's been running about 5+ hours which is longer than previous 4 hours. It should be done by this evening. If this works, I will schedule backups. I should know by next Monday. Thanks.

The USB drive seems fine. I did a long format and I ran Backups on another w2008 server for almost one week. The drive was installed again in the original server this morning but it was not recognized even by rescanning using Device Manager. A server reboot finally showed the drive. The good news so far is that it's been running about 5+ hours which is longer than previous 4 hours. It should be done by this evening. If this works, I will schedule backups. I should know by next Monday. Thanks.

Backup completed after about 12 hours. It would be nice if there was a way to identify drive entries in Event Viewer "device\harddisk2\DR2 ". Does that correlate to disk 2 in Disk Management? Not sure how the problem went away but glad I can now schedule backups. In summary, drive was not reserved for backups and a long format was done to make sure there were no bad blocks. I doubt either fixed the issue. Problem solved. Thanks.