Resolving a backup failure after moving Acctivate to a new server.

This article explains why a backup might fail after moving Acctivate to a new server and how to resolve it.

Users may receive the following error when backing up Acctivate.

Cannot use the backup file 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Acctivate\..\Backup\ACCTivate$Demo.bkf' because it was originally formatted with sector size 512 and is now on a device with sector size 4096. BACKUP DATABASE is terminating abnormally.

This error may be returned if you are running a backup in which the backup file already exists.  When running a backup when the .bkf file already exists, Acctivate will append to the file, meaning SQL Server will create multiple backup sets within one backup file.

Typically, this error is returned after migrating Acctivate from one server machine to another.  If the backup was originally created on the old server in which the hard disk was formatted with a sector size of 512 bytes and then the backup was copied to the new server where the new hard disk is formatted with a sector size of 4kb, SQL Server will be unable to append to the backup file due to a sector size discrepancy.

Fortunately, the solution is quite simple.  The backup file simply needs to be deleted and recreated.  In an abundance of caution, we recommend the following:

• In the backup window, slightly modify the backup file name.  Here we renamed 'ACCTivate$Demo.bkf' to 'ACCTivate$Demo_NEW.bkf'.
• Run the backup, which should run properly now.
• Take note of the backup location and browse to this Backup directory.
• Delete the original Backup file, called 'ACCTivate$Demo.bkf', which was most likely copied from the old server machine.

Now, moving forward, you should have no issue creating a backup using the default backup file name.