Hi, We're currently using a series of "stsadm -o backup" operations to backup our SharePoint sites. While the site is being backed up, the site cannot be accessed by users. Recently we've discovered that any emails sent to a email enabled list are going missing. Inspecting the SharePoint logs reveals... 05/11/2010 07:39:41.11 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x09F0) 0x103C Windows SharePoint Services E-Mail 6874 Warning An error occurred while attempting to create an attachment for an item sent via e-mail. The e-mail was sent to the list "Emails and Documents", and the error was: Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED)). Meaning that the OWSTIMER cannot upload the email into the list while the backup is running. I'd of hoped that the email would have been queued until the site is available again. Has anyone else encountered this issue? What do you do to resolve it? We're planning on implementing a new backup solution in the next few weeks, but user confidence is being damaged by these emails getting lost. Thanks in advance. Gary.

Bump... Is the issue that the "out of the box" stsadm backup is flawed, and that a 3rd party backup solution is the fix?

Hi Gazzle, In the Document Library Settings | Communications | Incoming e-mail settings, check whether you select the “ Accept e-mail messages from any sender” option. If not, enable this option, then monitor whether the warning disappear. In addition, please check the following setting on your SharePoint server: 1. Ensure that the account used to run the WSS Timer service is at least a Power User on the SharePoint server that's running the SMTP service. This account needs the right permissions to read the IIS metabase in order to find the SMTP drop folder location. 2. If this still doesn't work, try hard-coding the mail drop folder. You can do this in Central Admin -> Operations -> "Incoming email server settings" and choosing the Advanced option. The mail drop folder option is the last one on the page For more information about the 6874 issue, please refer to the following article: http://suguk.org/forums/thread/9803.aspx Hope this is helpful to you. Rock WangRock Wang MSFT

Many thanks Rock. However it doesn't my problem :( The email service works fine all of the time, except when site is locked during backup with the stsadm command. During the site backup, no user, SharePoint administrator, process can access the site for update. This is why the email fails. A site with 15Gb of content takes 1 hour to backup. During this time any emails sent to the site are lost.

Gazzle if thats the case why don't you take a backup of the Content_DB directly in SQL, as it will be faster and your site will be available in READ/Write more as compared to using STSADM -o Backup which puts your site in read only mode till the backup is complete. To restore a SharePoint Site from a SQL Databse backup in case needed Restore the backup database in SQL. At the command prompt, use stsadm command to add the content database to your site stsadm.exe -o addcontentdb -url <your url> -databasename <content database> -databaseserver <database server name> Do an IISRESET Go to Central Administration under Application Management look at the list of content databases for your web application. You should see two DB the old one - which will have no sites and the new one just attached. You can Delete the old database. Hope that helps. -Mukesh

Hi Mukesh, Thanks - we're investigating other backup options, and considering a DB backup. One issue with backing up the database, is that it's not possible to restore an individual site without restoring the entire database. Is this true, and if so, it there a workaround?

Yes you wont be able to restore individual site, if restoring from SQL DB backup. Also you can use the nositelock switch along with STSADM -o Backup, but make sure that If changes are made to the site collection during the backup process, the backup can become corrupted. So there is a risk using the nositelock switch. Even Microsoft recommends If the size of the site collection that you want to back up is from 15 GB through 100 GB, use Microsoft SQL Server or Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager to perform a full backup of the site collection database. For more info read the following http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc706876.aspx For nositelock http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc287967.aspx I would suggest you also consider using DPM for your SharePoint backups, by me its a great backup solution for all your Microsoft Applications. -Mukesh

We really need backups at a site collection level. At the moment we're investigating backup solutions from Veritas and AvePoint. Thanks everyone for your help!