MS SQL Backup And Restore

Introduction

Helium Music Manager is able to backup your active Microsoft SQL database (if any) during a backup operation.

Backing up a Microsoft SQL database is a bit special, since it's done in two major steps:

1. Invoking SQL Servers native backup command

2. Moving the resulting backup file to Helium Music Managers backup structure

One important thing about backing up a Microsoft SQL database is that a "native" backup folder must be set. Generally such a folder is created when MS SQL Server is installed. This folder is often located in "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Backup".

Helium Music Manager will automatically try to locate this folder, and set it as active by default. This folder is used in BOTH a backup and a restore operation by MS SQL Server. If the folder is not present/located you will need to select a valid backup folder by yourself.

The important thing when you need to select this folder manually is that the MS SQL Server Windows user (e.g. "SQLServer2005MSSQLUser") must have full control to this folder. Please see your MS SQL server documentation for more details.

Restoring a MS SQL Database

When you are restoring a Helium Music Manager backup containing a MS SQL database using the Restore tool, this database will be restored automatically.

Restoring a Microsoft SQL database requires the following:

• The Microsoft SQL server must be named the same as the server which the backup was created with

• The Microsoft SQL server must be running

• The "native" backup/restore folder (see above) must be set

Please note that when you restore a Microsoft SQL database from a Helium Music Manager backup, the current database will be overwritten.

To backup/restore "snapshots" of your Microsoft SQL database, please refer to your Microsoft SQL documentation.

If your server has been renamed, the restore operation will fail and you will need to manually restore the database backup.

To restore a Microsoft SQL database manually follow these steps:

1. Extract the MS SQL database from the backup (the .zip file). The file is named mssqlbackup.bak and is located under the MSSQL folder.

2. Restore the mssqlbackup.bak file using your Microsoft SQL Management tool (e.g. Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio) using the restore command. For more details, please see your Microsoft SQL documentation/SQL Management tool documentation.