Media Family ... Is Incorrectly Formed

I am using SQL Server 2000 SP 3a enterprise. We do a nightly backup to
a
network location and then in the middle of the night the files are
written to
tape from the network. We have verified our backup plan will work by
choosing a backup and restoring it to the database. We have done this
many
times without problems. However, there is a backup that when I try to
restore it I get the Error:
Server: Msg 3241, Level 16, State 37, Line 1 The media family on device
'UNC
Path.bak' is incorrectly formed. SQL Server cannot process this media
family.
I have run the command: RESTORE HEADERONLY FROM DISK='UNC Path.BAK'.
The
backupName from this says *** INCOMPLETE ***; Position = 1; the rest of
the
fields are NULL.
What would happen to make the backup INCOMPLETE? Maybe this would
happen if
an error was encountered part way throught backing up the file? The
file has
almost 800 MB of data in it. I would like to restore this file and get
out a
specific set of records if possible. Even if I can't get everything,
if I
could get at least some of it then that would be better than a complete
loss.
Is there anyway to get the data that is contained in the file back?
Thank you
KalvinHi
A bad backup is a bad backup, not much you can do with it. Maybe opening a
call with Microsoft PSS might help as they may have tools to read partial
backups.
Regards
--
Mike Epprecht, Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Zurich, Switzerland
MVP Program: http://www.microsoft.com/mvp
Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/epprecht/
"Kalvin" wrote:

> I am using SQL Server 2000 SP 3a enterprise. We do a nightly backup to
> a
> network location and then in the middle of the night the files are
> written to
> tape from the network. We have verified our backup plan will work by
> choosing a backup and restoring it to the database. We have done this
> many
> times without problems. However, there is a backup that when I try to
> restore it I get the Error:
> Server: Msg 3241, Level 16, State 37, Line 1 The media family on device
> 'UNC
> Path.bak' is incorrectly formed. SQL Server cannot process this media
> family.
> I have run the command: RESTORE HEADERONLY FROM DISK='UNC Path.BAK'.
> The
> backupName from this says *** INCOMPLETE ***; Position = 1; the rest of
> the
> fields are NULL.
> What would happen to make the backup INCOMPLETE? Maybe this would
> happen if
> an error was encountered part way throught backing up the file? The
> file has
> almost 800 MB of data in it. I would like to restore this file and get
> out a
> specific set of records if possible. Even if I can't get everything,
> if I
> could get at least some of it then that would be better than a complete
> loss.
>
> Is there anyway to get the data that is contained in the file back?
>
> --
> Thank you
> Kalvin
>