Hey All,
We get errors daily from our msdb backup when sending to a remote NAS. We have a backup scheme set up to backup 5 databases, plus msdb. Daily Full at 2:00am, Diff at 3 hours, Tx Logs at 15 minutes. Backup files get saved locally on the SQL server, and remotely on a NAS.
Every single night, all backups work fine, except for the msdb copy to the NAS. The local copy works fine, but when it copies to the NAS, we get 5 WARNING entries and one ERROR that “The process cannot access the file ‘E:\msdb202506300201.bak’ because it is being used by another process.”, followed by the Backup failed message. This file reference is the source file that is being copied off to the NAS, not the destination copy. The other 5 databases that get copied in the same manner do not cause this error.
The local backup copy and the copy on the NAS are the exact same size, so I don’t understand why I get this error, and if I should be doing something to prevent it.
Any insight would be appreciated!
Hi Tim,
Thank you for your message.
To investigate the issue further, we’ll need more details. Could you please send us the Advanced Log? You can find instructions here:
How to send Log to developers – SQLBackupAndFTP’s blog
Please let us know when the log will be sent and your Application ID (“Help” > “Application ID”).
We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your cooperation.
I looked at the backup settings again this morning and noticed that the Temp folder and the backup folder were the same. I created a new temp folder and changed that setting.
I don’t know if it would cause this issue or not, but I can let it run with the new settings for a week or so and see if I still get the error. Interestingly, the errors are not happening every night since I asked the question. They only happen 2-3 nights per week now, and that is before changing the temp folder setting.
Hi Tim,
Thanks for the update.
After running with the new setting, are you still seeing any of those intermittent errors, or has the issue been resolved?
No, the errors have not occurred at all in the past week. I did also later discover that msdb and master were being backed up by a second job that was only doing a daily full backup, so I removed it from the full/diff/log backup.
All seems to be good now!