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greendemiurge

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NT Backup backs up wrong source drive

This is a real anomaly.

I have a client with and SBS 2003 who alternates daily between two external terabyte hard drives.  These drives run the built in NT Backup through server management to back up the system drive only (C:, all data handled by another backup program).

Drive one is fine.  It backs up about 30 gigs of info in a timely fashion and verifies it.  Drive two takes forever and often fails.  After much troubleshooting I figured out that this is because instead of backing up the system drive it is backing itself up, possibly not even skipping its own backup directory.

Both drives are running the same backup profile (which I did recreate using NTbackup and scheduled tasks instead of the server management backup, all to the same effect.)  This profile explicitly excludes all drives but the c: drive.  When the profile runs on the second drive it shows "C:/....[name of path that actually exists on f:].  Further, the backup size on drive two matches its own size, and increases daily as it backs up itself plus the previous backup.

I can't even tell if this is a software or a hardware issue.  I think I'm out of configuration options and yet I have no evidence that the hardware is malfunctioning.

Thanks for looking
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plug1
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I would create 2 seperate scheduled tasks\profiles, ntbackup probably recognises the 2nd drive as not being part of its backup set and this is causing you problems.
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greendemiurge

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Thanks for the input.

Unfortunately this is not going to help.  I plugged the second drive in and completely removed and re-created the backup system, both through server administration and the NTbackup wizard and in both cases it behaved as described above, that is it claimed to be backing up c: but was actually backing itself up.

I would love to be able to chock it up to a defective drive, but I doubt I could get warranty replacement from Maxtor without a better diagnosis of how the drive is broken.

Thanks
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plug1
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Sorry to be out of the loop.  Due to the weekend and the nature of my access to the equipment I only just now got around to trying this.  Preliminary tests seem to indicate that re-partition and reformat did the job.  I will close this question after a successful backup or two.

Thanks