Trying to restore a vendor supplied .bak and every attempt fails: first a version error, then after moving to a newer instance, media family errors and a RESTORE terminating abnormally. Is the file junk or am I doing this wrong?
Error restoring a SQL database from BAK file
Solved SQL & Databases
BA
Barry Allen September 10, 2019
2 replies
8,470 views
Reviewed by moderators
Each message means something different:
1
Version error: backups never restore to an OLDER SQL Server. Check the origin with
RESTORE HEADERONLY FROM DISK='file.bak' and restore to that version or newer.2
Media family error: incomplete or corrupt transfer. Compare file size and checksum with the vendor, and re-download without any FTP text mode nonsense.
3
Verify before restoring:
RESTORE VERIFYONLY FROM DISK='file.bak' tells you if the backup itself is readable.4
Vendor cannot re-supply and the file is truly damaged: SysTools SQL Backup Recovery reads broken BAK files and extracts the database contents directly.
HEADERONLY showed SQL 2019 origin and we were restoring to 2016. New instance, clean restore. Solved.