July 30, 2010 at 9:39 am
Hi everyone.
I have SQL Server 2008 Express on my local machine that I have made a backup of a database.
I am trying to restore that database to SQL Server 2003 on our network.
I get the error message: ....bak is incorrectly formed
Of course, I can restore that database on my local machine that has SQL Server 2008 Express, which is where I made the backup from.
Is this a compatibility issue between 2 different versions of SQL while trying to use a backup from a newer version to restore onto an older version? If so, is there any way to resolve this?
Thanks!
July 30, 2010 at 9:43 am
There isn't any way to use a newer version backup to restore to an older version of SQL Server.
You'll have to script out all the objects and copy the data. If you're running SSIS or DTS, there are 'copy database' tasks that can greatly help with that.
July 30, 2010 at 9:47 am
There's no SQL Server 2003, so I'm not sure what version you're using.
The files are structured differently in each version, often because of changes to the system. As a result, you can restore, or attach, an older database to a newer version, but not the other way around. The old version doesn't recognize things that were added.
What you can do is what David suggested. SCript things out, transfer data. SSIS (not on Express) has a task to make this easier.
July 30, 2010 at 9:54 am
Whoops, I was thinking Office 2003. It is SQL Server 2005
July 30, 2010 at 9:57 am
Same thing. Backups aren't backward compatible. You can't restore a backup taken on SQL 2008 onto SQL 2005.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
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