I'm having a bit of trouble understanding the purpose of the WITH FORMAT option of the SQL Server BACKUP DATABASE command.
Using the MSDN example:
USE AdventureWorks2012;
GO
BACKUP DATABASE AdventureWorks2012
TO DISK = 'Z:\SQLServerBackups\AdventureWorks2012.Bak'
WITH FORMAT,
MEDIANAME = 'Z_SQLServerBackups',
NAME = 'Full Backup of AdventureWorks2012';
GO
I understand this deletes any existing backups and creates a new one.
If I was to omit the WITH FORMAT line, and I already had a backup at Z:\SQLServerBackups\AdventureWorks2012.Bak, what does this mean to my backup?
Is it incremental or does it overwrite with a full one?
It's a full backup, essentially appended to the file if it exists already, you'll see a File number 2 reference when you run it, and you'll see the backup file double in size. Each backup is independent of each other and either can be restored.
Related
I'd like to create a database backup using SSMS.
The backup file will be a .bak file, but I would like to ignore 1 column in a certain table, because this column isn't necessary, but it takes up 95% of the backup size.
The column values should all be replaced by 0x00 (column type is varbinary(max), not null).
What's the best way to do this?
FYI: I know how to generate a regular backup using Tasks => Back Up..
There is a long way of doing what you ask. Its basically create a new restored database, remove the non required data and then do a new backup again.
Create a Backup of the production database.
Restore the backup locally on production with a new name
Update the column with 0x00
Shrink the database (Shrink is helpful when doing a restore. This wont reduce the bak file size)
Take the backup of the new database (Also use Backup Compression to reduce the size even more)
Ftp the bak file
If you only needed a few tables, you could have used bcp but that looks out of the picture for your current requirement.
From SQL Server native backups, you can't. You'd have to restore the database to some other location and then migrate usefull data.
You can create a copy of your table without the column and backup using filegroups https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms191539(SQL.90).aspx
When running the BACKUP command, like this:
BACKUP DATABASE dbname TO DISK ... etc.
You can specify a name for the backup with this option:
NAME = N'something'
I have many backup files and need to read the NAME property if there was specified one. How do I do it?
I think I understand your question now.
You can get all the data (including the name) of the backups made in the server by querying the backupset table in msdb database.
Try this:
SELECT *
FROM msdb.dbo.backupset
Note: This table contains only data of successful backup operations:
Contains a row for each backup set. A backup set contains the backup from a single, successful backup operation.
If you want to find the name of backup files use this T-SQL syntax:
RESTORE HEADERONLY FROM DISK = 'C:\BackupfilePath\BackUpfileName.bak'
GO
This code will give information of your backup file.
Name will comes as BackUpName field.
You can this code also with Power Shell.
I have some sql server's backup file(format .bck). In my case, I do not know log file name.
So I can't use with move in restore command.
Is there anyway to restore database without move? If yes, please guide me.
I want to use like below one.
restore database testdb from disk = 'folderpath\aatest.bak'
You sure can know the log file name and use WITH MOVE. Use RESTORE FILELISTONLY to retrieve the list of database files (including log) from the backup first.
i have the following query from msdn to restore a SQL Server database backup
RESTORE DATABASE <DBName> FROM DISK = '<BackupFilePath>\<BackupFileName>'
GO
What if you want to load the backup to a new database with new name without restoring it to replace the current one?
In the interface I would select Restore Files and Filegroups and change the to database name then it would create a new one with the backup data in it, is this possible with a simple query?
The restore command above can be used to specify a new name, but when the old database still exists on the same machine you'll get an error because it will try to use the same filenames for the data. You can use the WITH MOVE clause to get around that:
RESTORE DATABASE TestDB
FROM DISK = 'C:\Backup.BAK',
WITH MOVE 'AdventureWorks2012_Data' TO 'C:\MySQLServer\testdb.mdf',
MOVE 'AdventureWorks2012_Log' TO 'C:\MySQLServer\testdb.ldf';
GO
The above example came from the MSDN documentation on the restore command:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms186858.aspx
I have two backup files
1) is named 'backup.sql' with a bunch of SQL defining TABLES
2) is named 'backup' with a bunch of encoded data, which I believe are the ROWS
I need to restore these TABLES + ROWS, but all I am able to figure out is how to restore the tables.
Any tips on dealing with these files? It's the first time I ever deal with SQL Server.
The backup process would not create a file with actual SQL statements, it would create a binary file. So #1 is not a backup file (it's probably a script someone saved to re-create the schema).
I would try to use SQL Server Management Studio to restore the second file and see what happens. I don't think it will allow you to restore an invalid file, but I would take some basic precautions like backing up the system first.
What is the extension for the 'backup' file? Is the filename backup.bak? If you have a backup file created by sql server then it 'should' contain the logic to create both the tables and restore the data, but it could depend on how the backup was created.
---Edit
It is possible for a .SQL file to contain data values as well as the logic to create the tables/columns for a database. I used to run backups of a MySql database in this way a long time ago...it just is not seen very often with SQL server since it has built in backup/restore funcationality.
Seems unlikely they would export all the rows from all tables into CSV file, and given you said it looks encrypted, it's making me think that's your actual backup file.
try this, save a copy of the "backup" file, rename it to backup.bak and run this from SQL Server Management Studio
restore filelistonly from disk='C:\backup.bak'
(assuming your file is saved on the root of the C: drive)
Any results/errors?