Backups

29 Sep 2019 23306 views 0 minutes to read Contributors

This topic introduces the SQL Server backup component. Backing up your SQL Server database is essential for protecting your data. This discussion covers backup types, and backup restrictions. The topic also introduces SQL Server backup devices and backup media.

Types of backups

copy-only backup
A special-use backup that is independent of the regular sequence of SQL Server backups.

data backup
A backup of data in a complete database (a database backup), a partial database (a partial backup), or a set of data files or filegroups (a file backup).

database backup
A backup of a database. Full database backups represent the whole database at the time the backup finished. Differential database backups contain only changes made to the database since its most recent full database backup.

differential backup
A data backup that is based on the latest full backup of a complete or partial database or a set of data files or filegroups (the differential base) and that contains only the data extents that have changed since the differential base.

A differential partial backup records only the data extents that have changed in the filegroups since the previous partial backup, known as the base for the differential.

full backup
A data backup that contains all the data in a specific database or set of filegroups or files, and also enough log to allow for recovering that data.

log backup
A backup of transaction logs that includes all log records that were not backed up in a previous log backup. (full recovery model)

file backup
A backup of one or more database files or filegroups.

partial backup
Contains data from only some of the filegroups in a database, including the data in the primary filegroup, every read/write filegroup, and any optionally-specified read-only files.

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