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Errors

Practice CS - Exception error "The media family on device is incorrectly formed"

While attempting to restore a Practice CS database, an exception error may be thrown:
An exception occurred while executing a Transact-SQL statement or batch.
Additional Information:
The Media Family on device 'C:\CSP_<Firm ID>\<Database>.bak' is incorrectly formed. SQL Server cannot process this media family.
RESTORE HEADERONLY is terminating abnormally. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 3241)
This error is an indication that either the SQL Server version is invalid, or that the file has become corrupted.

Invalid SQL Server version

SQL Servers are not backwards compatible; therefore, you need to always restore on the same version, or higher. For example, if the backup was created from a server running Practice CS on SQL Server 2016, and you attempt to restore the backup to a server currently running Practice CS on SQL Server 2012, you will receive this error.
In this instance, you need to upgrade your SQL Server to the version your database had been running on. For this example, you would need to install SQL Server 2016, re-run Step 2 of the Practice CS install, and point it to the new SQL Server 2016 instance.
note
If you received a SQL backup from Virtual Office, then that backup was taken from Practice CS running on SQL Server 2014.

Corrupt backup file

The file became corrupt while transferring to a new location. This is most prominent when downloading from an FTP site, or transferring across networks.
Because of this, it can be difficult to diagnose where the corruption takes place. Typically, this is a result of a Firewall/Anti-Virus running and scanning the file as it is being downloaded. A workaround is to attempt to download the file from another workstation, or to turn off the Firewall/Anti-Virus temporarily during the download.
note
This doesn’t mean the Database is corrupted. Rather, the file is corrupted due to environmental variables.

This article applies to:

  • Product: Practice CS