Troubleshooting : Msg 3201 – Cannot open network drive .. Operating System error =5 (Access Denied )

You will get the above error when performing a backup to a network share and the error looks like the below .

                                                          

Server: Msg 3201, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Cannot open backup device  ‘Drive:\path\Database_Name.dat'. Device error or device off-line. See the SQL Server error log for more details.

                                                                (or)

 Server: Msg 3013, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Backup or restore operation terminating abnormally.

In error log the details will be looks like below one

15/07/25 12:25:49.54 kernel dbsvolopen: Backup device '\\svrname\data\Datbase_Name.DAT' failed to open, operating system error = 5 (Access is denied.)
15/07/25 12:25:49.54 kernel dbswritecheck: Backup device '\\svrname\data\ Datbase_Name.DAT' failed to open, operating system error = 5 (Access is denied.)

Route Cause

This error occurs due to insufficient permissions on the network drive .

Solution

SQL Server must be running using a domain user account to access any resource on a remote computer with the rights access to the both the Windows NT Servers and its underlying partition.

So start up account should have required rights to that shared folder path in order to have the backup.

Kindly note that if you change the SQL Server services account then you need to restart the services hence it is a service level change.