Saturday 19 October 2013

SBS 2011 Backup Issues - (the operation to backup the volume was stopped before the operation started running)

So I've recently had this issue on a few servers, and it seems to baffle a few people. I thought I'd share my knowledge on the subject of this.

 9/10 times the error is due to your version of sharepoint requiring an update. If you receive the error "the operation to backup the volume was stopped before the operation started running" when you do a Windows Backup, then the next step is to check your VSS writers.

 Open a command prompt (administrator privs) and then type vssadmin list writers

 Look for the spsearch writer and it will most probably say "Inconsistent State"

 If that's the case, then bingo. To solve the problem, navigate to the following path in the command prompt:

 C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\BIN>

 and then run:

 PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -force -cmd applicationcontent -install -cmd
installfeatures

Sharepoint should then upgrade itself and you should find your backups working!

I've used this on a few servers and it's always sorted the issue for me. 
 
Edit: It also appears that "the operation to backup the volume was stopped before the operation started running" error also occurs if you forget to plug your backup device into the server - so check if that's the case first.
Hope it helps someone!
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9 comments:

  1. Unknown1 March 2015 at 05:33

    I spent many hours trying to resolve this issue. Des suggestion resolved it for SBS 2011. Thanks for taking the time and sharing Des!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Des2 March 2015 at 06:48

      I'm glad it helped you out Sammie - thanks for taking the time to comment!

      Delete
  2. Unknown14 July 2015 at 22:51

    Hi Des and thank you for your post

    If possible, may you please assist me with a similar problem
    Currently I'm running Win Server 2008 and get the below error

    'the operation to backup the volume was stopped before the operation started running'

    This is a backup of logs to an iSCSI drive

    What could be the cause of the issue

    Thanks
    Jabu

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Des15 July 2015 at 00:10

      Hi Jabu

      I know your pain - there any quite a few reasons for it though. I take it my advice in the post didn't sort it? You may be able to retrieve further information about the error from the event viewer under "Applications and Services" > "Microsoft" > "Windows" > "Backup"

      A few quick questions - are you backing up to the iSCSI target as a dedicated drive or a folder on a volume? Is the iSCSI target a very large drive? There are size limitations on what 2008 can use to backup to (over 2GB you need to start checking sector sizes I believe)

      I have an iSCSI target being used as a backup path for an SBS2011 server and its never really given me any grief.

      Some food for thought perhaps

      Thanks

      Delete
  3. Unknown15 July 2015 at 01:30

    Thank you for your prompt response

    Unfortunately your insightful information didn't do the trick for me but good to know
    I will continue to review the event logs and one of the logs that I came across had the below error:

    'The backup operation that started at '‎2015‎-‎07‎-‎15T04:00:00.497260900Z' has failed because another backup or recovery operation is in progress. Please stop the conflicting operation, and then rerun the backup operation.'

    Backing up to a folder
    The drive is large in size (1TB)

    The backup is configured to run every 30 minutes of each and everyday. some instances complete successfully and some do not.

    Hope this is helpful

    Thank you

    ReplyDelete
  4. Unknown15 July 2015 at 01:32

    ...Given the error posted above...it's strange because I only have one instance of a backup configured...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Des15 July 2015 at 03:18

      Are you looking at the backups using the Windows Backup Console or using the command line?

      It may be you have something that's not showing up in the console so it would be worth opening an elevated command prompt and using wbadmin to check if anything else is going on.

      wbadmin get status

      Delete
  5. Unknown22 July 2015 at 01:14

    Hi Des,sorry for the delayed response

    I normally use the GUI interface but I've also checked with CMD and nothing seems to be interfering

    ReplyDelete
  6. Tubbyhubbie27 April 2016 at 23:04

    Thanks i had 3 servers with the same issue, resolved them all

    ReplyDelete

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