Any other solutions for SQL's “The media set has 2 media families but only 1 are provided. All members must be provided.” error?

Question

I am trying to restore a 200mb database into SQL 2008 and I am getting this error \"The media set has 2 media families but only 1 are provided. All members must be provided.

Answer 1

See this thread. The Microsoft Project Manager for SQL Backup explains the error.

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqltools/thread/abf50e00-c9b0-4809-9e61-43ed8a53e968/

Basically you can stripe your backup across 2 files (Like RAID 0 not what he said) and if you try to restore from only one file you get this error. You need both files to restore and you can't recover from only one file. I don't know what to tell you, maybe you are getting the error message by mistake. Otherwise, I hope you didn't do a scrub on that old server's drives.

Answer 2

Codeguy007 is pretty much correct. This error occurs if you specify two different backup locations in your INITIAL backup and then attempt to restore from only one of the two backup files that are created during the backup process. If your server is already down and wiped then you are hosed. But for future reference, you need to:

1. Begin the backup wizard process
2. Ensure that only one backup location is specified
3. On the options page, click on 'Back up to a new media set...' and specify a new name and description

All future restores from this location should work just fine.

Answer 3

Having just gone through this myself, I just wanted to confirm what others have said and give a warning. When I first tried to create a backup from a 2008 R2 from the Wizard, the backup destination already had a 'NULL' destination added automatically.

Not realizing, I simply added another file location, so the end result was a file with only half the data.

such a stuff up!

Answer 4

I also learned this via experience.

So make sure you create your backup file using one media set or one file only so that you will not have a problem restoring it on the future: