I have a production SQLServer 6.5 on Nt 3.51 SP4
that had problems two weeks ago, an I had
to restore the backup of the previous night.

we are testing our disaster recovery procedures
on another server, identical to the production
one.

We have installed NT 3.51 SP 4 and SQLServer 6.5
in the same order and with the same configuration
of the production server,
but i can't restore on the test server the
backup files that i have succesfully resotred
on the production server.

we make the SQLServer back up on file ( and
then we backup those files on tape with
NT backup) so I don't think is a problem
of HW Tape Bios or Compression because
i have tried to resotre directly the
files without taking them from a tape.

1)
I have created a new database , without data,
with the same devices, in megabyte, that I
have on the production server.
than from enterprise manager I have started
the restore from file, and after two seconds
everything stops, and I can't even shutdown
the task but i MUST turn the server off
using the power button.

when I start the server again there are
no specific errors in the event log nor
in the SQLServer error log.
The db i was trying to restore is marked
"loading" and it is not available.

This same procedure works perfectly
on the production server.

2)
I have then created another db on the test
server, and I have succesfully tranferred
( but not resotred) the produciont db
onto the test one, using the transfer menu
on SQLEnterprise manager.

3)
another strange thing is that I have tryed
to expand the tempdb, which is only 2 mega
by default, but whenever i try to expand it,
using enterprise manager, only the LOG area
of tempdb sucessfully expands, not the data area.
I don't know if this behaviour is related
to the unsuccesfull restore or if
it is another problem.

i have checked the sort order and character set
of the 2 servers and they are the same.

thanks in advance for any help.

Eugenio La Mesa
Publisoft
Italy