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Say
you've decided to run RESTORE
VERIFYONLY on all
SQL Server 2005/2008 backup files that you copy to a file server,
even though RESTORE
VERIFYONLY
isn't 100%
reliable.
However, the departmental budget did not provide for the purchase
and maintenance costs of another SQL Server 2005/2008 license. What
now?
Well, enter SQL Server 2005/2008 Express Editions (Express). That's
the free edition of SQL Server 2005, that's usually associated with
under-4 GB databases. A little known fact is that the Express
Edition is able to work with files larger than 4 GB when running
the RESTORE
VERIFYONLY command.
That's right, you can install Express on your file server where all
your backup files are stored, and happily verify all your backup
files to ensure that they are valid. Did I mention that Express is
free?
Obviously, you'll need to write some code to trigger the
verification, logging and notification of errors etc (ok, it's not
entirely free in that sense). That's when we use
SQL
Verify.
At the time of writing, you can download SQL Server 2005 Express
from this
link, and
SQL Server 2008 R2 Express from this
link.
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Document history
6/27/2008 | Initial release. |
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