Dell NetWorker 19.9 Administration Guide

BMR backups may fail with the following error:

device is not ready

Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012 R2 has 100 MB reserved as the System Reserved Partition. When backing up the system state, VSS includes the System Reserved Partition (used for BitLocker and Boot files), but the backup fails because the System Reserved Partition is offline. This can occur if the Windows automount capability is disabled. Although there are circumstances where the automount capability must be disabled, it can result in the partition being offline after a restart. Automount must be enabled for a BMR backup to succeed.

To work around this issue, use either of the following solutions:

Solution 1

From the command prompt, run DISKPART with the following commands:

DISKPART

List volume

Select volume <number of 100 MB system partition>

Online volume (if the volume is offline)

If automount is disabled while using third party storage software or if the user manually disabled the automount for the volume, the volumes can go offline.

This Microsoft KB article 2419286, available at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2419286, provides details on preventing volumes from going offline by checking and setting the system automount attribute.

Solution 2

From the Disk Management console:

1. Access Disk Management from the command prompt:

   C:\>Diskmgmt.msc

2. To bring the disk online, assign the drive letter to the 100 MB partition:
   1. Right-click the 100 MB volume, and then select Change Drive Letter and Paths.
   2. Assign a new drive letter to the volume.

      Assigning the drive letter ensures that the volume are online after a restart.