Backup to UNC path

I'm having a problem with a backup job.

15 or so databases are being backed up overnight to a remote server using UNC paths. All bar one database is being copied fine. The one that isn't is the largest at 8gb. The error in the log is OS error 64 (the network name could not be found).

Now I've got the customer looking into any reasons why their network may be interrupted overnight, but while googling around I saw someone mentioned that backing up to UNC with databases over 2gb can cause problems? Is there any truth in this?

I am inclined to reccomend the user backs up the database to a local drive and then sets up a scheduled task to copy it across, but I'm interested to see if this is a known issue.

Thanks.My own Opinion (MOO)

You should backup to the local drive, then copy the dump.

It'll be faster and safer...

MOO|||Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away ... oops, wrong place

I had that situation once. You could download a free copy of gzip and use that to compress the backup on the local machine before copying it across the network. I tried winzip, but it became unreliable after the database grew to over 4 GB. I **never** had a problem unzipping the database using gzip, and before I left that company, it had grown to over 17 GB.

I backed up the db to a backup device, zipped the file into a new file, and then copied the zipped file off server, where it was then picked up by the tape backup daily. Triple redundacy!!|||As I thought :)

btw does anyone know if sql 2005 will support native compression of backups?

Sage databases have a *lot* of padding. I've got a 1gb database that compressed down to 25mb with winrar, would be nice to have backups compressed right off the bat!|||backup to disk
use network backup to backup the backup file
saves you money so you dont have to buy the sql plugin for your backup software. and you get permenent backup devices which make restoring a whole lot easier.

backup database db1 to db1full
backup database db1 to db1diff with differential
backup log db1 to db1log

i know where all of my fulls, diffs and logs are without searching through hundreds of files in a dir.

convenient yes
does it compress well? not really.