Backup fails to create/format container?

[geeksplus]

Hi

I'm in trial period at the moment and have 3 installs of version 8.1.1. One is on an SBS 2011 server and two are on Server 2008 R2. I have set up incremental system images to a Thecus nas device and assigned 2tb vhd containers for each server in distinct directories. Somewhat bizarrely, one of the 2008 server jobs created the container and has been backing up happily for around a week, the other 2 servers are failing and returning the following error message:

Retrieving volume information...
This will back up volume Local Disk(C:) to Y:.
ERROR - The specified backup location is formatted ((null)) and cannot
be used to store backups. Please format the volume with NTFS or specify
another NTFS volume.

The nas drive is not formatted with NTFS but I assume the message is likely referencing the formatting of the container rather than the volume it sits on based on the fact that after the job has finished/failed there is often a windows message left behind stating that disk E: or Y: needs to be formatted before use, presumably these are the mounts that BA creates? After the backup fails I'm left with a roughly 6mb vhd file in the backup destination.

I've check the backup settings across all three jobs and they are all the same. Any ideas why one would run but not the others?

Thanks

Mark

[geeksplus]

I've tried switching on the option to force compatible mount and it seems to have resolved the issue on the SBS 2011 copy but not the Server 2008 instance from which I now receive the following error :

Could not retrieve or set Shadow Storage maximum size
VSS_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND: this->pDiffMgmt->ChangeDiffAreaMaximumSize(WString(volumeName).wstr(), WString(diffAreaVolumeName).wstr(), maximumDiffSpace)

vssadmin reports no issues, any ideas?

Thanks

[casey.burns]

Hi there,

My name is Casey, and I'm with the BackupAssist team. Thanks for posting on our forum.

Unfortunately, there are multiple reasons as to why this kind of problem can occur and it can be rather difficult to troubleshoot without more information.

Would it be possible for you to send in a set of diagnostic information from BackupAssist?
To send us diagnostic information please follow these steps:

1) Go to Help (from the top-right corner of the console) -> Contact Support
2) Fill out the form and ensure that the Submit system diagnostics checkbox at the bottom is checked.

If you have any issues using our automated support tool please follow these steps to manually send in your diagnostics file:

1. Go to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data (server 2003/XP) or C:\ProgramData\ (server 2008/Vista/Win7)
2. Find the BackupAssist folder, zip up the version of the following folder: BackupAssist vX (Where X is the version that you are running)
3. Once you've zipped up all the folders needed please go to our manual submission website that will collect the data and send to us: http://www.backupassist.com/BackupAssis ... submit.php.

I hope this helps, please let me know if you have anything further to add.
Kind regards,

Casey Burns
BackupAssist Support