During the recent consulting engagement Comprehensive Database Performance Health Check with SQL Server 2017/2019, my client’s DBA asked me if I can help with an error message which they are seeing while restoring a backup. This was a very interesting error to me and realize that not many people might have hit this error – Msg 3254 – The volume on device <Path\File> is empty. Followed by Msg 3013 – RESTORE DATABASE is terminating abnormally.
The complete error message which they received was as follows:
Msg 3254, Level 16, State 1, Line 14
The volume on device ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL15.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\Backup\ProdDB.bak’ is empty.
Msg 3013, Level 16, State 1, Line 14
RESTORE DATABASE is terminating abnormally.
In my lab environment, I was able to get the same error while I provided a text file which was not a real database backup file.
Command:
RESTORE DATABASE SQLAuthority FROM DISK = 'C:\Temp\SQLAuthority.bak'
Output:
Msg 3254, Level 16, State 1, Line 12
The volume on device ‘C:\Temp\SQLAuthority.bak’ is empty.
Msg 3013, Level 16, State 1, Line 12
RESTORE DATABASE is terminating abnormally.
WORKAROUND/SOLUTION – Terminating Abnormally
If restore is failing with this error, I would always check the physical size of the backup file first. I have tried various combinations and found that if the file size is less than 512 KB then I was getting the same error. Once file size was touched 512 KB then error message was this:
Msg 3241, Level 16, State 0, Line 15
The media family on device ‘C:\Temp\SQLAuthority.bak’ is incorrectly formed. SQL Server cannot process this media family.
Msg 3013, Level 16, State 1, Line 15
RESTORE DATABASE is terminating abnormally.
The below image shows the timestamp, size and error message change.
From my test, it was clear that the backup file was not a correct file as it can never be less than 512 KB in size. So, if you are getting “device is empty” error, check the size and use another backup of the database which is healthy.
Reference: Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com)
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