I am trying to take a backup and restore a site collection on my SharePoint 2003 Server environment using the STSADM utility. I was able to create a backup of my top level site which contains a document library of 2000 items. The utility completed successively generating a back up file around 2Gigs in size.
When i try to restore the site the utility gives an Operation Aborted message. Is there a log that is generated that gives better insight into why the restore operation failed?
Try the ULS logs as usual in the first instance...
You should monitor your SQL server. When doing backup and restores, TembDB takes a bit of a hammering, as does the database where your site is being restored. Ensure that everything has space to grow sufficiently (this may be more than you think - I've experienced the need for greater than 3 times the source data size).
If things should fail on the SQL end, this should be reflected in Application or SQL error logs on the SQL instance.
Are you renaming the site when you restore? If you are making the site name longer you may be running into limits over path lengths.