Overcame -519 After Much Troubleshooting

[rdeal]

Got the dreaded -519 error during the middle of a Windows 2000 Professional client backup. Tried several times to restart the backup, but it kept failing on the same file. Tried excluding the file from the backup, but that didn't work. I noticed that the client's LAN connection was becoming disconnected during the backup of the file, and the NT event log contained errors regarding the client's wireless USB network card.

 

Tried a router tweak or two. Also reinstalled the wireless network drivers on the client. Also tried other Retrospect access methods. The backup still failed on the same file.

 

I recently ditched Ghost 2003 because it crashed during backups to media other than CDs and because I didn't want to spend money for Symantec support. I then decided to purchase Retrospect. I really need to back up our computers, so I've been a bit preoccupied with this -519 error. After quite a bit of brainstorming I suspected that it could be something other than a firewall problem that was causing -519, especially since some of the backup had occurred at all.

 

The backup sets were being written to an external USB drive on the backup computer. I wondered if something could be hampering client writes to the drive. I pulled up File Explorer on the client and tried to map the drive, at which point the following error message appeared: Not enough server storage is available to process this command. Thinking this could be part of the problem, I searched Google, which pointed me to an article at microsoft.com (Q177078). The article said that Norton Antivirus was to blame for the server storage error...NAV had reduced my IRPStackSize (I had already ditched NAV 2005 a few days earlier because of its annoying bug with activation and because of its insidious, parasitic integration with other programs). After applying the fix from Q177078, I could map the USB drive on the backup machine, so I restarted the client backup.

 

The client backup cooked along like a champ, until it failed with -519 while trying to backup the same file it had failed on before. An attempt to exclude the file from the *earlier* backups did not produce fruitful results, but I tried it again anyway. To my surprise, the backup made good progress beyond that point. A few other files produced -519, but each time I excluded those from the backup. Interestingly, all of the files that were excluded were media files, like ai (Adobe Illustrator), psd (Adobe Photoshop), jpg, or mpg.

 

After much persistence (no pun intended), I now have a client backup.

[rdeal]

I'm still mulling over this. I suppose I made a big assumption about the internals of the client backup - that it is what writes data to the backup set. I'd really like to know more details about how the client backup works.

 

I'm going back now and trying to backup the files that were excluded from the original client backup. I tried moving the problematic files to a different directory on the client and backing them up by making a subvolume out of the directory. Retrospect still cannot back them up.

 

I wonder if it's the file itself that's causing the problem. I'd be willing to donate a copy of one or more of the files for troubleshooting by the Retrospect developers.

[rdeal]

Turns out it wasn't the files. It was a network issue. I found a piece of cable and tried backing up the client with it wired it directly into the router, and the files that failed before were backed up successfully.

 

Being able to do a wireless backup is ideal. I suppose I'll try a different wireless card.