Aha, I used 1TB drives on SBS as it compressed everything so I could get quite a few incrementals on it. It looks like Western Digital have a solution to this problem: http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/6618 Not sure whether you can do something similar in Seagate drives. Andrew. -----Original Message----- From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of George Bell Sent: 26 June 2014 11:06 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] USB External Server Backup Drives Total on all drives is around 800 GB, so I'd figured that 2 TB would allow for that plus incrementals. Up until now, I'd been using a 300 GB Maxstor USB drive, and just backing up the System, not the data. This is a known issue, and below I've pasted just one easy to understand explanation. Allegedly some of these larger drives do support 512k sector size, but it's all but impossible to find out which. Hence my asking if anyone was currently using one and what make and mode. George. "The reason is that most of these large drives have a 4K sector size, rather than the older 512 byte sector size. You can get a patch for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 that fixes most problems, but it does not fix the backup issue. The further reason is that Windows Server Backup uses VHD virtual drives as its file format. The VHD format presumes the use of 512byte sectors, and the drivers that read and write data are optimised for this. You cannot create or mount VHDs on a disk with 4K sectors." -----Original Message----- From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Hodgson Sent: 26 June 2014 10:04 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] USB External Server Backup Drives Hi, How much data are you backing up? I used standard USB drives and they worked fine. Andrew. -----Original Message----- From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of George Bell Sent: 26 June 2014 09:56 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] USB External Server Backup Drives Does anyone know of, and perhaps even use, a make and model of UEB external drive which will allow backup of SBS 2011/Server 2008 R2. Ideally I need 2. There appears to be a very limited range of such drives, and certainly the likes of the Seagate Backup Plus (2 TB) do not work. It needs to be something I can remove one from the premises, without getting a hernia in the process. George. _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins