NT Backup Switches

Learn about two switches to use with NT Backup that can help you with bad tapes and broken spanned data sets.

Bob Chronister

April 17, 2001

1 Min Read
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I often use Windows NT Backup but have consistent troubles with bad tapes and broken spanned data sets. I seem to recall hearing about switches that can overcome these problems. Do you know what these switches are?

The two switches you're looking for are /nopoll and /missingtape. The /nopoll switch is great for erasing troublesome tapes. The syntax

ntbackup /nopoll

tells NT Backup to erase the tape. Don't use /nopoll with other parameters.

The /missingtape switch tells NT Backup that a tape is missing from a backup set that spans several tapes. Thus, it should treat each tape in the set as a single unit. Use the syntax

ntbackup /missingtape
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