Restore Error - "SQL Server cannot process the media family"

[ken_halvorsen2]

Has anyone else received the following error message while attempting a Database restore? Is there a work around for this?

"The Media family on device xxx is incorrectly formed. SQL Server cannot process this media family"

I'm trying to do a database restore from the ECC 6.0 Production system with SQL Server 2005 usings Veritas NetBackup 6.0 onto one of our QA systems (with the same setup ECC 6.0, SQL Server 2005, and same OS). We have done this same restore countless times before, and have never received this error.

I have used 3 different (recent) backup tapes from Production suspecting a corrputed backup file or tape.

I have searched the internet and found that with SQL Server 2000 you could get this error if the Transaction log grew to 4 GB in size but was suppose to be fixed. ( I have checked and the Trans Log is only 38,000 MB's and all restores up to this point have been sucessful.)

I'm getting frustrated and the Operations Team is getting impatient, Does anyone have any Idea on what the problem might be?

Thanks

[markus_doehr2]

I would suspect that the backup is indeed corrupt.

What you could try is to do the backup onto a really new tape and try to restore that one.

Markus

[ken_halvorsen2]

Thanks Markus

That was my first thoughts as well. So had asked the Backup team to re-run the full backup and then attempted another restore. Then I decreased the size of the Transaction Log and run another backup last night, attempting a restore from that those tapes this morning.

I could have believed 1 backup or tape of being corrupted, but not 3 in a row.

My next plan is to attempt a restore from the last backup of itself.

If successful, I can assume that there is nothing incorrectly set up on target server.

If unsuccessful, we'll have to dig deeper on the target server for changes since the last successful restore was performed

Then I'm going to attempt a restore from the same backup tapes as the last successful restore on this server

If successful we can assume it's something that has been changed on the Source server (Prod)

If unsuccessful we can assume for sure it's something on target serve.

I will also ask the Backup team if it's possible to backup Production onto "New" tapes, but I'm not sure if we have that option (identifying specific tapes for specific backups).

Ken

[ken_halvorsen2]

FYI: The restore from a recent backup of the Target was successful. The restore from a previousdated backup of the Source (production) was also successful.

We have opened a ticket with Veritas (the backup software), but my sense is that it's something to do with the SQL Server 2005 and or Windows OS software.

[ken_halvorsen2]

FYI: After a month of troubleshooting we've come up with a cause and solution.

It turns out that Veritas NetBackup had a bug in the version we have. The problem was that you could not restore from a Backup that was over 1 TB in size and had been encrypted.

They created a patch for us and have mentioned that it'll be in the next update / version.

Ken