Check your Informix-NT backups!

If you're using Informix on NT (we're using Workgroup Server 7.23.TC9 ) I'd advice you to check your on-bar backups closely - we've discovered that when a database space has more then 2 Gig of data in multiple chunks, on-bar doesn't copy that space to tape, and fails silently - i.e. it doesn't tell you anything went wrong. In more detail - When you do an on-bar backup, it copies all the data out of each dbspace into a file in \\temp. This file is then copied to tape. We've found out, that when the size of that temporary file exceeds 2 gig 2,147,483,648 bytes), on-bar doesn't copy that file to tape, but doesn't tell you that it has failed. You should be able to tell by looking at bar_act.log - if the gap between completing backing up one space and starting the next is much smaller that you'd expect (i.e. for us 1 minute vs 20-30 minutes) you're probably hitting the same problem. This is all with 7.23.TC9 and NT 4.0 SP3, but I don't know if any other versions are affected. ( I don't know if Tech Support have reproduced the problem). We originally tested our backup & recovery procedures, and everything worked - but over time our data has grown in size, and it was only when we tried to move our databases from one machine to another we noticed this rather nasty little bug. Anyway, hope this helps someone! Andrew Lawrenson -- - Remove nospam. from address when replying by email - Any Opinions Expressed within are Mine and not necessarily those of my Employer