JSI Tip 9629. NTBackup.exe fails with 'The device reported an error on a request to write data to media' on Windows Server 2003?

When the Windows Server 2003 NTBackup.exe fails, you receive:

The device reported an error on a request to write data to media.
Error reported: Invalid command. There may be a hardware or media problem
Please check the system event log for relevant failures.

You may notice that the media name may change to a number, and attempts to restore from that media fail.

This behavior will occur if you stop and restart the Removable Storage service during the backup.

To workaround this behavior, DO NOT stop the Removable Storage service during the backup.