Backing up storage sever to WD My Passport 2tb USB 3.0 not working

Legacy Products WD Sentinel
1

I have read all posts regarding this and still can’t get this to work. I have the 4tb ver. with 2tb of usable free space so the USB hard drive should work to backup the server. As stated by others in this forum, the option to use this drive for server backup dose not appear. Others wrote about using remote desktop to access the server, how do I do this?

Thanks in advance…

2

From a client click start>run, type mstsc and press eneter

Username administrator and whatever the password is

Then at the server desktop clcikl the lil computer/tool box bottom left.

Bottom left of Server Manager expand Storage

Then Click backup

Wizard is in the right hand pane

3

Thank you for the reply and help. I will give this a try and let everyone know how it goes.

4

Yes. The system for backing up the server is not even close to user friendly.

Why is there not a simpler way to do this.

If you have succes with your backup-that is great, but you should not need this workaround. Let us know how it goes.

5

Well this works however I still don’t understand why this can’t be done from the dashboard. I guess this will have to do for now.

6

Because it only works on the 4/2tb version.  If you add another drive and go to 6/4tb it will fail.  Since most versions are larger than 4/2TB WD removed the functionality from the dashboard.

7

This has been discussed in a previous thread, but I believe the answer as to why you’re confused is that there is a problem backing up partitions larger than 2TB. When you have a 6TB DX4000 with either 3x 2TB HDD or 2x 3TB drives, the partition size will be larger than 2TB, and hence the backup will fail. This is a Windows limitation, not a DX4000 one. If you utilize a third-party backup solution this often won’t apply; If your external drive comes with backup software you may try installing that on the DX4000.

8

Mr.Windows,

if I add more drives in the future then I will have to worry about this limitation. What 3rd party backup solutions do you recommend that would handle a partition larger than 2tb on Storage Server 2008 R2?

9

StorageCraft ShadowProtect is one

10

I can’t get this to work at all - even thru remote desktop.

I have a 4Tb/2TB sentinel, ie it is a 4TB box with 2 TB of useable storage. I’ve tried to use remote desktop to get the machine to backup to an external 3TB drive, that is connected via USB 3.0.

WD has contacted me about this, and they are saying you can’t backup to a drive that is larger than 2TB. I though the 2 TB limit was on the server - not the external backup drive.

It looks like I am getting an I/O device error. When I go to the REmtoe Desktop Server Manager. Any suggestions?

11

This ring any bells?

Note that Microsoft recommend drives are reformatted as NTFS before being used with Windows Server Backup (WSB). Large drives (eg 3TB+) should be reformatted with 512 bytes per cluster as large drives tend to be factory formatted with 4096 bytes per cluster which can cause problems with WSB.

Also note, they say it backed up, but the restore failed ??  This link is about SBS. but the Backup engine is the same as WSSE.  I would have to play with this, but if the BMR is failing with the 3tb drive it prob has something to do with the WinPE drivers in the boot thumb.

So it may be simpler/a better idea for you to get a 2tb drive :frowning:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/1780.external-backup-drives-compatibility-list.aspx

12

After sleeping on it LOL

If you really want to use your 3tb drive I think you will be Ok.  Of course you should test it.  The format thing should allow it to back up

I think the restore error came from I bet the boxes they were backing up were “BIOS Mode”, so when they do a restore it cannot see the drive over 3tb.  But since *our* boxes are uEFI, my thoughts are it would work.

You could back it up, but from that thumb drive, hit next, etc.  I think if you got a calendar to pick what backup, it would work.  And you could just stop there.  But you really should do a full restore instead of finding out it did not work.

I do have a 3tb drive here somewhere, but it may be several days before I could get a chance to play with it.

(Or just get a 2tb disco)