SQL Server Backup - move to new server - Media Failure I've got a server in the UK with SQL Server 2008. It's very locked down firewall-wise. 


We want a local duplicate of the DB to test and build a new report.
Backing up the relevant DB, and then transferring over FTP (binary-mode) to here in the USA ends up saying in SQL Server 2012:


  Media family on device is incorrectly formed. SQL server cannot process this media family.

I also tried transferring using File Transfer 1.2j (from Sourceforge), as well as splitting them into zips/7zip chunks and copying them slowly through RDP. 
None of them load on our SQL Server 2012 machines. This is the key difference between my case and other SO posts I've read. They're going backwards in version. I'm going forwards, which is supposed to be supported.
I've also verified the files on both ends using certutil to generate SHA-1 hashes.
Lastly, the backup CAN be restored in the UK into itself! So the backup isn't corrupt when coming from SQL Server. I'm also 99% sure it's a copy-only backup so it doesn't need any other differential files.


So the only thing left I see is corruption across the internet (yet SHA-1 says otherwise), or, we're not saving correct backups, or, somehow our USA SQL doesn't want to load the older UK SQL. Does localization even matter, especially if they're both English?
As Andrew Loree suggested, this might be due to a 3rd party SQL backup product being installed on the source instance.

In order to find out what software was used to take the backup, you can run a RESTORE HEADERONLY on the .bak file from your SQL2012 instance. That should give you some information about how the backup was created.

RESTORE HEADERONLY FROM DISK='X:\file.bak'


If the above also fails, then there would be corruption, but you've already ruled out corruption via SHA1 checksums.