If your user has added a lot of shares recently, this error message could be
referring to a lack of sufficient virtual memory, or swap file space. You
don't mention the operating system version. It could be Seagate is writing
all the folders on all the shares to the swap file, and sometimes the entire
structure is too large to fit. Granted, that's a lot of folders or a small
swap file, but I had a similar situation with an SQL statement that consumed
swap file at a horrendous rate, and was equally unhelpful with the error
messages. Of course, it could just be a bug in the software. You could
test for that by breaking the backup into multiple scheduled jobs, so fewer
folders are in each job.
Tom Turak
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Whalen [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2002 1:17 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [PCSOFT] Mean, Old Seagate Backup
Hey folks,
I'm trying to figure out some odd behavior on a Win 95 machine.
My customer is running Seagate backup version 6.2 for Windows. Yes,
that old backup software that has since left Seagate and gone through
several companies since its days of yore.
Occasionally, the application will report that it's "unable to
allocate memory." If the customer attempts to "free up" memory and
click Ok, which the box advises, the application "perform[s] an
illegal operation" and crashes.
I have been able to recreate the error. It occurs after the program
scans all open shares for files to back up. Now, the particular backup
job they run isn't designed to back up all the files/folders it sees
during this scan; it's designed to do only incrementally saved files
and even then it's not set up to consider every folder on every share.
Yet, it will scan all files to see which ones qualify for back up.
The OS is _extremely_ clean. There are a few background tasks, but the
tape backup has run flawlessly for quite awhile and, from what I can
see, the customer really hasn't changed anything on the system in the
last five to six months. This error has popped up in the last month.
I think I've reached a bust looking for this particular error for this
particular application. Right now, I'm open to considering why an
application might give this error when the system is bursting the
memory and system resources.
If you guys don't have any particular thoughts on Seagate Backup and
the errors it produces, I'm open to similarly-performing backup
utilities that I can recommend to the customer.
Thoughts, folks?
Cheers,
Mike Whalen
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