.bak File For Differential Backup Is Becoming Too Large
Apr 9, 2008
When we do a full backup the .bak file is 700MB but in the meanwhile our differential backup has grown to a size of 20GB. The backup set expires in 1 day and if the backup file already exists we "append" to it.
What we basically want is a differential backup for one day only. I realize that in SQL Server 2005 you could add a "Clean up" task but that is to delete files but because we only have 1 .bak file for the differential backup this is not an option.
If we set to overwrite the backup file if it already exists what does this mean? Assume that we run a differential backup every hour, does this mean that the differential backup file will be overwritten every hour?
How can we make sure that we have a differential backup every hour and keep only the differential backups for the last 24 hours?
I recently started using Differential backups. They are working but are growing in size a lot quicker than I expected.
The backups are growing by 2.5GB every day although the total size of all transaction backups is under 350MB. I would have imagined that the total transaction log backups would be a good indicator of total database changes and therefore the differential backups would approach this figure.
I have just begun to try out differential backups. Almost every reference I found on the internet said to use a .dif file extension. Books Online "Back Up Database Task (Maintenance Plan) MS.SQLCC.v9/MS.SQLSVR.v9.en/uirfsql9/html/ed1ef012-fa14-4ba5-bafe-d1527ba065b3.htm only says :
Backup file extension Specify the extension to use for the backup files. The default is .bak.
Using .dif for the differential shows "Microsoft Office Excel Data Interchange Format" as the type when looking at the backup folder. URL... indicates that .dif has 11 different uses, including "Difference data file." In a couple of posts in this forum in April and May of this year David Dye said that the file extension for differential backups is .bak, the same as for the full backup.
If this is the case, this would cause a problem with our maintenance plan policy which is to retain the two most recent backup files on the server. If we do a full backup for the base on the weekend and differential backups the rest of the week, our full backup would have to be restored from out tape system before we could do a restore. Recoveries are pretty rare, but when we get that panicked phone call that someone accidently deleted all the records of a major client, time is of the essence in getting that point in time restore done.
Hi everybody, On executing the RESTORE command of SQL Server to restore from a backup of 78.3 MB, the "Server Application Unavailable" error message comes up.The error message in the Application log is as follows:aspnet_wp.exe (PID: 2184) was recycled because memory consumption exceeded the 152 MB (60 percent of available RAM). However using Query Analyser of SQL Server I am able to restore the database. What is the solution to this problem?
Using Ola Hallengren's scripts I do a full backup of a database on a Sunday. Then differential backups every 6 hours and log backups every hour. I would like to keep a full week of backups based off the full backup done on Sunday. Is there a way for me to clear out the diff and log folders after the successful full backup on Sunday nights?
I have a database that is just over 1.5GB and the Full backup that is 13GB not sure how this is since we have compression on for full backups and my other full backups are much smaller than there respective databases...Now my full backup is taken every Sunday night and the differentials are taken every 6 hours after the full backup. Now I have been thrown into this DBA role with little to no experience just what I have picked up and read. So my understanding of backups are limited but what I think I understand is that we take a full backup and the differential only captures what changes in the database so my question is why is my database 1.5GB but my differential is 15.4GB? I have others database that are on the same instance and don't seem to have this problem. I also just noticed that we do not rebuild the index before a full backup like we do on other instances...
I am using the Simple recovery model and I'm taking a weekly full backup each Monday morning with differentials taken every 4 hours during the day.
On Wednesday afternoon, a programmer ran a process that corrupted the db and I had to restore to the most recent differential. It was 5pm in the afternoon and a differential backup had just occured at 4pm. No problem, I figured.
I restored the full backup from Monday morning and tried to restore the most recent differential backup. The differential restore failed. Since I had used T-SQL for the initial attempt, I tried using Enterprise Manager to try again.
When viewing the backup history, I see my initial full backup taken on Monday plus all the differentials. BUT, on closer inspection, I noticed another full backup in the backup history that was taken early Tuesday morning. I can't figure out where this Tuesday morning full backup came from. It wasn't taken by me (or scheduled by me) and I'm the only one with access to the server. My full backups are usually named something like HCMPRP_20070718_FULL.bak. This erroneous full backup was named something like HCMPRP_03a_361adk2k_dd53.bak. It seemed like it was a system generated name. Not something I would choose. To top it off, I could not find this backup file anywhere on the server and when I tried to restore using this full backup, it failed.
Does anyone have any clues as to where this full backup might come from? Does SQL Server trigger a full backup on its own if some threshold is reached?
I ended up having to restore using the differential taken just before this erroneous full backup and lost a day of transactions.
Using SQL Server 2005, we have a 2.8Gb database under the Simple recovery model. The database contains ~50M rows and each night ~60k rows are loaded(appended) to the database by a SSIS task.
We configured a Maintenance Plan which is executed once a week to perform a full backup of the database. The resulting backup file is ~2.8Gb, as expected.
We also configured another Maintenance Plan which is executed every day, a few hours after the SSIS task is executed, to perform a differential backup. To our surprise, the resulting backup file is about the same size as the full backup, ~2.8Gb when it should only be a few MB (only 60k rows are added to the database)
When we launch the "Restore Database" wizzard we clearly see the different backup set, Full and Differential but they all have about the same size (same for the physical backup file on disk).
Is there anything we are missing, why are the differential backup that big?
Thru maintenance plan I backup my DBs every night and the T-Logs every hour. Now I have to set the option "select into/bulk copy" on one DB. I schedule the differential backup every 3 hour with option "overwrite existing media", wich is, in my case, one file on disk. My sequence of T-Logs is valid even if a non logged operations occurs? If I have to restore this DB can I use the last full backup + the differential backup + all the logs in between?
I trying to created a Differential backup and I get the following error. Can anyone help?
The volume on device 'd:MSSQL7BACKUPCPIDATABKUP.BAK' is not part of a multifamily (RAID) media set. Use WITH FORMAT to form a new RAID set. [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 3259) Backup or restore operation terminating abnormally. [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 3013). The step failed.
I'm trying to create a differential backup job that run hourly and that creates a different differential files. Ext. dbfilename1am, dbfilename2am, dbfilename3am ect... Can I do this with one job? Are do I have to create a differential backup job for each hour?
I've defined a maintenance plan in SQL2005, which creates a differential backup of a DB daily. Suppose I'm having differential backups from May, 10 to May, 14 but backup files of May 12 and May 13 are lost (deleted unexpectedly). Am I losing some data, if I restore from backup file of May 14?
I need to replication a server database out side a firewall. But can't change the server configuring for replication, so replication is out. So I wanted to know if I have a full backup of every db send to me every 24hrs. W/ differential every hr, will the restoring process work on the restoring server? Should I restored the full 1st? I'm not sure if the restoring of the Differential will work. Any help on the steps to take, to get this to work with backups & differential will be greatly appreciated.
I'm trying to run a differential backup on our new 7.0 box. It fails with an error message number 3242 "The file on Device 'E:MyFile' is not a valid Microsoft Tape Format backup set."
Why "Tape Format" if I said "Backup database [mydb] to disk"?..
When I run exactly the same query without "Differential" I got a full db backup.
When a new scheduled job is created for a Differential backup, the file specified in the Destination folder is automatically created by SQL Server. After the first time the job runs, is there a way to configure SQL Server to give each Differential file a unique name, including the timestamp (i.e. similar to Full Backup jobs)? I noticed my only options are 'Append to File" and "Overwrite Existing File." If I choose to enable "Backup Set Expiration," the backup job will not run, because it wants to append/overwrite the filename specified.
Hi, Im trying to restore the differential backup,I have to restore the full backup first and then restore the differential backup.Can any body tell me the code for this?
my program is like this --for fullbackup if type=D begin restore database databasename from disk=path end --for differential backup else if type=I ???
I have recently started receiving failures on a differential backup thatpreviously succeeded. Nothing has changed with the structure of the db.Here is the message, any ideas are welcomed. Thanks.Executed as user: fsafood-netisqlservice. The backup data in'E:SQL_BackupsBiz_SalesBiz_Sales_Diff.bak' is incorrectly formatted.Backups cannot be appended, but existing backup sets may still beusable. [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 3266) BACKUP DATABASE is terminatingabnormally. [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 3013) Associated statement is notprepared [SQLSTATE HY007] (Error 0) The media family on device'E:SQL_BackupsBiz_SalesBiz_Sales_Diff.bak' is incorrectly formed. SQLServer cannot process this media family. [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 3241)VERIFY DATABASE is terminating abnormally. [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error3013). The step failed.*** Sent via Devdex http://www.devdex.com ***Don't just participate in USENET...get rewarded for it!
I create a full backup followed by daily differential backup, when I restore database from the fifth or later differential item, I get the following Error Message:
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlError: This differential backup cannot be restored because the database has not been restored to the earlier state. (Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo)
It seems that there is an error when the fifth differential backup occurred, It's a disaster, how can I do, help!
Where can I find more about Multibase Differential Backups? I searched through BOL and MSDN (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178046.aspx) but there is too few information (missing sample, backup syntax for selecting differential base).
Is it possible to have two (or more) bases for differential backup for one database? How to preform such backups?
I am doing a differential backup every night with t-log backups every 15 mins. The differential backup occurs at 3:00a and is about 300 MB. The very next t-log backup at 3:15a is also about 300 MB instead of the usual 1 - 2 MB. Why is this and how can I avoid it? Is this just how SQL Server works? Do I have to do a full backup every night instead? Thanks in advance for your help.
Standard Edition (64-bit) on Windows NT 5.2 (Build 3790: Service Pack 1)
When i attempt to take differentail backup i receieved following message
"Cannot perform a differential backup for database "abc", because a current database backup does not exist. Perform a full database backup by reissuing BACKUP DATABASE, omitting the WITH DIFFERENTIAL option. [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 3035) BACKUP DATABASE is terminating abnormally. [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 3013)."
when i search this msg on net than i find that it is microsoft bug 863 so i found hotfixes about this problem and tried to install but unable to install (On installation screen select feature i am unable to click on check box)
Can any one help me regarding to this issue .And more is.. full back of db "abc" exists and i never changed its location nor rename file name.
receive an error: "Cannot perform a differential backup for database ..., because a current database backup does not exist." Can't fully understand what to do with this.
I'm making backups of the database by first making a full backup and then differential backups. The differentials are backed up to separate files.
Restore of the full backup works fine, but I can't restore a differential backup. In Management Studio Express, I first do a full backup restore with option NO RECOVERY and then try to restore a differential backup. But this failes with the message:
"This differential backup cannot be restored because the database has not been restored to the correct earlier state."
Is it possible to restore a differential backup that is backed up to a separate file?
I want to set a full and differential backup to one database in sql server 2000. Is there a way to set both full and differential to just one database.
i want the full backup weekly once and differential every day to set up.
Newbie to backups here. I'm trying to setup a Maintenence Plan for backing up the system tables. For some reason the Differential backup on the Master table is failing.
Can you NOT run differential backups on the Master table?
1- I have created a backup device 2- I have created a maintenance plan full backup and run it - with overwrite option on the backup device 3- I have created a maintenance plan differential backup and run it with append option on the same file of backup device 4- I have created a maintenance plan log backup with append option on the same backup device
When I made restore database from the backup device i found three files the full and differential and log backup
5- I ran again the differential backup maintenance plan ( suppose to be ran everyday night )
when i made restore database I found only two backups the full and the last differential !!!
what I want to do is to take a full backup every week , append differential backup everyday and append log backup every hour
when I ran the last differential backup it erased the first differential and log backups, why is this happening and how to apply this scenario and keep the all differential backups on the same backup device .
