Pretending to restore

For example John Smith

Is there any reason why SQL Server (EM) would go through all the motions of
a restore and not actually do anything at all?

To get into this situation I backup from a client's server and download that
backup to my server where I restore it, as I hate having to type in the
physical path names each time what I did was backup my old copy to a file,
then replace that file with the one I downloaded and then do a Restore
operation and use the last backup of that database, it appears to do a
restore and in fact does bugger all.

Jul 20 '05 #1

John Bandettini

Mr Smith

I don't think SQL Server does fake restores, it sounds like you are
not restoring the backup that you think you are. I don't see what the
typing problem is. If you have an existing database to restore to and
a backup file, you can do it all through the EM GUI without any
typing.

Copy the backup you want to restore again, but to somewhere else so
there is no confusion. Perform the backup through the GUI. It should
be all right. If you still get the fake restore, you may need to type
I'm afraid. Try a 'restore headeronly' to check your backup is what
you expect it to be. (Probably a good idea to do this first actually)

Regards

John

Jul 20 '05 #2

Simon Hayes

"For example John Smith" <someone@microsoft.com> wrote in message news:<3f157d5d$0$18762$afc38c87@news.easynet.co.uk >...[color=blue]
> Is there any reason why SQL Server (EM) would go through all the motions of
> a restore and not actually do anything at all?
>
> To get into this situation I backup from a client's server and download that
> backup to my server where I restore it, as I hate having to type in the
> physical path names each time what I did was backup my old copy to a file,
> then replace that file with the one I downloaded and then do a Restore
> operation and use the last backup of that database, it appears to do a
> restore and in fact does bugger all.[/color]

I assume you know that the restore hasn't worked because there is no
new/different data in the database following the restore? EM isn't
always reliable, so it might be best to do a test restore using Query
Analyzer:

/* Check the ServerName in the backup set is really the other server
*/
restore headeronly from disk = 'c:\temp\MyDB.bak'

/* Restore the backup set */
restore database MyDB from disk = 'c:\temp\MyDB.bak' with stats

If this doesn't work, then perhaps you could post any errors that you
receive.

Simon

Jul 20 '05 #3