Error: network drive is not accessible or \\xxxx does not exist

Problem

User gets either of the following warnings for their backups:

  • Backup source “\\xxxx\xxxx” does not exist !
  • Network drive is not accessible.

Cause

  1. The share doesn’t exist
  2. The share is down
  3. The user account the backup agent used to authenticate to the share doesn’t have permission
  4. The share case sensitiveness does not match the original share case, this can happen if you manually add in the share name in the backup source for example in lowercase and the actual share name has mixed case.

Resolution

  1. Ensure the share exists
  2. Ensure that connectivity to the share exists
  3. Check the username & password used to connect to the share (in Windows Domain Authentication in the backup agent) – our recommendation is to follow our best practices for backing up network shares
  4. If the share is readable and shows files being backed up in the detailed report, you may have case sensitivity differences in the backup source vs past backups. Remove all references to the incorrect share associated with the wrong case sensitivity from the backup.