Win2000 Server Restore not Working

I know that every company has budget constraints, but it always amazes and amuses me when people are looking for "cheap" backup software for a business server. Please understand, I'm not trying to be a smart-ass, but "cheap" backup software is what you are using - the backup that is built into Win2K Server and has a lot of reliability issues. You are taking a very narrow view of things if you are thinking in terms of software that will work "for single-file restoration." When you are looking at what backup software costs, I always recommend that you estimate what it would cost your company to try to recreate all of the data that is being stored on that server in case of a full system crash.

With that in mind, I usually recommend Veritas Backup Exec as a backup solution. It is reliable, fairly easy to install and learn how to use, and fairly sophisticated, and does everything from single-file restoration to restoring the system state, registry hives and Active Directory. For the basic backup product that will back up one server, I believe it costs around $1,000 (full retail - you may be able to get it for less through on-line vendors like CDW). If you have more than one server and/or need additional options to back up open files, SQL or Exchange, etc., there are add-ons for that, too.

Hope this helps!

Try it ... and buy it if you like it.

BTW, VeritasBE is also very good software, but it's not cheap...

Acronis True Image Server 8.0 for Windows

Real-time Windows server disk backup

Instant bare metal server restore

Incremental and scheduled backup

Quick ROI

More about Acronis True Image Server 8.0 for Windows

Price: $699.00

Upgrade Now
Free Trial

congratulations on testing the backups. perhaps you need to 'import' your tapes for them to appear in the catalog?
with all respect sir, your post demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding on your part about how tape backup software works and i believe that is the root cause of your problems. i believe what you are asking for is simpler backup software and imho you ain't gonna find it in the 'big boys' tape backup software market. there is good reason for that although i have run into plenty of manager types who say that all those big buck Veritas research dudes are just making work for themselves writing software that you can't figure out without a few late nights reading and playing. i say, they are doing it for a reason and you should figure out what the reasons are. although i do buy the argument that backup softwarwe you don't understand is little better than no backups at all. this is opportunity for job security for you. backup software is fairly inscrutable and worth conquering is my two cents. otherwise maybe you in same ill-kept category, hmmm? perhaps you will wish you had been less judgemental of former admin when you see what is really wrong. but if you insist on non tape solution, maybe look at directory replicator?. really make brownie points putting together system so any user can get own stuff back at will. consider writing batchfile using robocopy, or mirroring drives and/or researching how to put back together system from backups or rebuilding system and using key backed up files to bring you back up to snuff. also document whatever you do. exactly what gets backed up and when. else others will be calling you ill-kept when maybe all you were was overworked and not appreciated.

SGT ~ First let me say that I am impressed you are able to talk so much crap when your English is so bad... and I'm backing up to a high-rely 250GB hotswappable 3 disk drive, BTW, not a tape.
Moving on, problem solved... The problem was two-fold: NTBACKUP.EXE was unable to handle the 46GB ".bkf" file, and attempted to break the .bkf into more easily managed media allocations, which all constituted one .bkf file. I am able to get a fully restorable backup using 3rd party software called "backupNow", as furnished by the manufacturer of the High-Rely drives. Second problem was that the .bkf file "lost" its catalogue when the file was moved from the default directory into the appropriate folder. This prevented any date from appearing except the default date, as none of the media was catalogued. An upgraded version of NTBACKUP.EXE (actually off of an XP machine) solved this problem. Thank you all (except SGT, of course) for your input. So now I will use NTBACKUP to copy the System State data, then copy the data using backupnow.exe. Thanks again... maybe this will help someone else.