Back up headache

We encountered a problem recently while using the Windows Backup Utility (NTBackup.exe). We scheduled the backup of a server to happen overnight to a network share on a different server attached to the network.

After checking the logs, we realised that the backup hadn't happened. This was really strange - the back up worked while logged in, but when trying to run the scheduled backup, the backup failed with various Event ID errors relating to DCOM problems.

It is sometimes the simpleist of mistakes that cause the most amount of head scratching. The problem turned out to be that the backup was scheduled to Append the data to the media rather than Replace. This doesn't sound like a huge problem on the face of it. But the fact that there was no backup job to append to caused the error.