Backing up to a mapped drive

Cem_Karaer

Hi all,

Is it possible to make an SQL back-up to a mapped drive?

David_Singleton

cemkaraer wrote:

Hi all,

Is it possible to make an SQL back-up to a mapped drive?

You really don't want to do this. There is a reason that this is disabled. Create the backup on a local drive.

Cem_Karaer

OK. Thank you

kriki

David Singleton wrote:

cemkaraer wrote:

Hi all,

Is it possible to make an SQL back-up to a mapped drive?

You really don't want to do this. There is a reason that this is disabled. Create the backup on a local drive.

And then move the backupfile over the network. It is a lot faster. And best make sure that the the SQL-server and the other server have their 'private' network. So a segment and network card ONLY for backup purposes.

It is possible to use the "\\computername\subdir\filename.bak"-way but do NOT do this in a production-environment! It slows too much down!

fredp1

From a technical point of view its possible to backup to a network drive, but its slow and its not generally a good idea.
Now to do a backup, you need to look at the account that runs the SQL Server Service in the services.
Normally it is the "system account" which means it cannot see any network resources, only local disk resources.
So you need to start the SQL Server Service using a domain account. Make sure your administrator has secured the account to limit access to only specific resources.
When you run the backup, then the SQL Server will be able to see other network resources.

If you want to run your backup via a SQL agent job, make sure that the SQL Agent Service is started with the same service account.
Have a look at the SQL Server books online on service accounts, as it explains a bit more about it.

Fred

Cem_Karaer

In fact, the main problem is the scarcity of local drives. The database files have became huge, so the back-up files too (50 GB in two years??). We need to store back-up files on a separate machine so as to compensate possible future growths of the database. The most logical approach seems to cut-and-paste the back-up files on a scheduled basis to the storage area.
Thanks for all your help!