Operating system error 5(Access is denied.). [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 3201) RESTORE DATABASE is terminating abnormally. [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 3013)

I found this error while I was watching for alerts in my new environment. I know this is a common and a silly error for DBA's on a senior level. I have intended to share this because I think it may at least help Newbies...
Issue

The Restore Job part of  a Maintenance Plan was failing with the above error. It was trying to get the backup file from one of the Shared Network Location. The job was running under SQL Server Service account and the error was

Executed as user: xxxx Cannot open backup device '\\xxx\d$\project\filetransfer\xxx.bak'. Operating system error 5(Access is denied.). [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 3201)  RESTORE DATABASE is terminating abnormally. [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 3013).  The step failed

.

Solution
Even after giving FULL permissions to service account for the folder and even Root (D Drive) it was failing. But when we changed the way we were calling the backup location it worked.

RESTORE DATABASE XXX
FROM DISK = '\\XXX\project\filetransfer\xxx.bak'.

Since the folder 'project' was shared, we omitted D$ and gave the shared folder name directly, which infact was the issue here.

Moral Of the Story:- Backups and Restores with Network locations are always Scary!!! :)



Hope this helps someone...Cheers and Njoy your day!!!