Microsoft sql server ошибка 3241

At times, when restoring a SQL Server database from a backup, you might encounter the 3241 error along with an error message ‘RESTORE HEADERONLY is terminating abnormally’.

What Causes SQL Database Error 3241, ‘RESTORE HEADERONLY is Terminating Abnormally’?

The error is caused when a backup file you are trying to restore gets corrupt due to an issue with the hardware (i.e., hard disks, network storage, etc.) or because of a malware attack. Also, you may encounter the error if you restore a backup from a recent version of SQL Server to an earlier version of SQL Server.

Note: If you get error 3241 when executing the ‘RESTORE FILELISTONLY’ statement, the error is caused due to a bug in SQL Server. To resolve the issue, install the cumulative updates released by Microsoft. For more information, read this KB.

Before We Proceed

Before attempting the solutions to troubleshoot the error, ensure the backup is readable by running the following T-SQL statement:

RESTORE VERIFYONLY FROM DISK=’ <path_to_your_backup>.BAK’

This command will check the backup file and returns a message stating whether the backup is useable or not.

If there is no problem with the backup, check your Windows System event logs for any hardware-related or networking issues. Also, ensure that you’re not restoring a database from a backup created on a higher version of SQL Server to a lower version.

If there is some issue with the backup file, proceed with implementing the following solutions.

Solutions to Resolve SQL Database Error 3241

Here’s what you can do to fix the error 3241 – that occurs due to corruption in the backup set:

• Locate another valid backup file to restore the database
• Create a new backup if the database is accessible

Alternative Solution to Restore Database from Backup

If you fail to restore the backup correctly, try to extract data from the corrupted backup (BAK) file using Stellar Repair for MS SQL Technician. The software provides a backup extractor tool to help the users recover data from a corrupt BAK file easily and quickly. After extracting the backup data, the software saves the data in a new or an existing database. You can evaluate the software functionality by downloading the demo version from the link below.

For detailed steps on using the backup extractor tool for data recovery, read this: How to Recover SQL Server Database from a Corrupt Backup File?

Stellar Repair for MS SQL Technician also comprises tools to repair a corrupt SQL database MDF, NDF files. Also, it provides a utility to reset the lost or forgotten password of master.mdf file.

End Note

You might fail to perform a backup and restore operation on a SQL Server database. And, get an error message that reads: ‘Restore HEADERONLY is terminating abnormally, Microsoft SQL Server error 3241’.  It happens when the backup you’re trying to restore is corrupt. In that case, check if you have any other backup copy you can use to restore the database or create a new backup set. If the issue persists, use Stellar Backup Extractor for MS SQL to retrieve data from a backup file.

Once you’ve retrieved your backup data and restored the database, you must prevent the 3241 media error from reoccurring. For this, do the following:

• To avoid backing up a corrupt database, ensure that the Backup CHECKSUM option is enabled. For more information, see Possible Media Errors During Backup and Restore (SQL Server).
• Use trace flag 3023 to enable CHECKSUM option when using backup utilities to perform a backup; this will ensure that the data is backed up in a healthy state. Besides, generation of backup checksum during a restore process ensures that the backup media is not damaged when transferring a copy of the SQL database.

Introduction

A common error when you try to restore a SQL Server database in any version is the following:

Msg 3241, Level 16, State 0, Line 4
The media family on device ‘c:SQLBACKUPSfile_13062019.bak’ is incorrectly formed. SQL Server cannot process this media family. Msg 3013, Level 16, State 1, Line 4
RESTORE HEADERONLY is terminating abnormally.

In this article, we will see how to fix this problem.

Requirements

The current
article can be applied to any SQL Server. It is also required the following
installers:

• First
  of all, the SQL Server installer
• Secondly,
  the SSMS installer

Getting started

What does the error message mean?

The error message 3241 indicates that the backup is corrupt. The header is corrupt during restoration according to the error message 3013. Level 16 of the error message indicates that the error can be corrected by the user.

How to get more information about the error

To get more
information, you can restore with the verifyonly option to see more information
about this error.

To do it, you can use the T-SQL to verify if the backup is OK or corrupted:

RESTORE VERIFYONLY FROM DISK = 'c:SQLBACKUPSfile_13062019.bak'; GO 

Reasons for the problem

There can
be multiple reasons. Sometimes the backup is corrupt due to a virus, malware, a
hacker attack, a problem in the hard drive where the backup is stored.
Sometimes, if the backup file is big, the problem can be that the file failed
to be copied correctly.

If you have to move the file from one server to another, check the file size and compare the original backup and the backup copied to verify that it is fine.

How to solve the problem

In order to
solve the problem, you can try to backup the file again. Sometimes, the file is
corrupt because the backup failed.

The following T-SQL sentence backups the database into a file:

BACKUP DATABASE sales TO DISK = 'c:SQLBACKUPSfile_13062019.bak' WITH FORMAT; 

If the backup fails again, it may mean that the backup is corrupt. If you want to restore a corrupt database, you can use the Stellar Repair for MS SQL. This SQL database repair software repairs corrupt databases.

How to repair a corrupt database using SQL database repair software

If your
database is corrupt, you can download this software to repair your database:

• The software will ask your MDF file.  The MDF file is the main data file. A physical file that stores the database information.

• Select the MDF file of the database to repair and press the Repair button:

• You will be able to see the tables, views, stored procedure, and other database objects:

• Finally, you can save using the Save icon to different formats like Excel, CSV or SQL Server.

How to restore the corrupt backup

If you do not have the database or if you want to fix the database directly, you can use the Stellar Toolkit for MS SQL.

You can get the installer here.

This software includes the Stellar Backup Extractor for MS SQL. The software repairs a corrupt database with few steps.

• First of all, select a backup file using the software and press scan:

• Next, you need to select the BackupSet.  You can check the backup type and date:

• As you can see, all the SQL Server versions are supported. Even SQL Server 7!

• If everything is fine, you will receive a success message:

• You can select the tables and preview the data.

• You can save the data in SQL Server, CSV file, HTML or Excel:

Conclusion

In this article, we learned how to fix the SQL Server 3241 error. This error is related to corruption in the backup.  The headers usually are corrupted. In the article, we mention multiple solutions. One is to create a backup again, if the database is corrupt you can repair the database with Stellar Repair for MS SQL.

If you do
not have access to the database or if you prefer to repair the backup directly,
you can use the Stellar Toolkit for MS SQL to repair the backup.