Monday, June 21, 2010

Restoring BKF file when the “BKF file is unusable...” error is displayed

The storage media, these days, are becoming more and more sophisticated and economical. And we have to spend these devices to create a repository for storing our ever-increasing data. But we must take certain measures to safeguard the data to avoid any data loss. For this purpose, there is NTBackup utility in the Windows NT (Server 2003, XP, and Server 2000) systems. This utility enables you to create backups of your valuable data in the form of BKF files. However, sometimes things can go really bad when these BKF files get corrupt when you try to restore the data from them. In such cases, you should try appropriate measures to restore the data. One of such measure is to use a third-party BKF repair tool that is used to repair BKF file.

Consider a scenario wherein you have created a backup for your data in the Incremental mode in Windows 2000. In this mode, the utility backs up the selected files only if they were created or modified since the previous backup. When you use the NTBackup utility to restore the backed up data, it displays an error message, that is:

“[Unrecognized Media]
The backup file is unusable. You must erase it, or choose another file.”

The only thing that you can do after getting this message is to click the OK button to close the dialog box.

Cause:
The main cause of this error message is that the BKF file is corrupted. The reasons for the corruption could be either virus infections, human errors, CRC errors, etc.

Resolution:
To start with, you should select the “Verify data after the backup completes” check box while performing any backups. This will ensure that the system check the integrity of the backup after completing it. You should also check the backup report and event logs after performing unattended backup operations.
Now, to repair BKF file, you should use a third-party BKF repair tool. Such read-only tools are able to restore all the data from BKF files using fast yet sophisticated scanning algorithms.

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