SQL Server Science
Technical Articles for the DBA / Developer
Home » RESTORE HEADERONLY

Proving the Restore, Part 13: Two Vocabularies for the Same Backup

2026-09-04 · by Hannah Vernon · in recovery

This series has used two sources for the same information. msdb records what the instance did. RESTORE HEADERONLY reads what’s in the files. They describe the same backups and disagree on almost every name. Code…

Proving the Restore, Part 7: One File, Hundreds of Backup Sets

2026-08-29 · by Hannah Vernon · in recovery

Point RESTORE HEADERONLY at a full backup and you get one row. Point it at the file a fifteen-minute log backup job has been appending to since Sunday and you get several hundred. Each row…

Proving the Restore, Part 3: The Error That Blames the Wrong Statement

2026-08-25 · by Hannah Vernon · in recovery

A scheduled job that had run for months started failing after a server was upgraded. The message in the job history:

1
2
Msg 3013, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
RESTORE HEADERONLY is terminating abnormally.

Read that as a DBA and you go looking at the backup file:…

Proving the Restore, Part 2: HEADERONLY Changes Shape Between Versions

2026-08-24 · by Hannah Vernon · in recovery

In I used msdb to find a database whose newest full backup had aged past a week. msdb tells you a backup happened. It doesn’t tell you the file is still readable, or which database…

Search

Categories

  • AI for DBAs
  • announcements
    • events
  • basics
    • localization
  • configuration
  • Data Architecture
  • DMVs
  • documentation
  • extended-events
  • Git for DBAs
  • High Availability
  • Hot Takes
  • Internals
  • maintenance
    • patching
  • Opinion
  • performance
  • PostgreSQL
  • Professional Development
  • recovery
  • reporting
  • ROLLBACK;
  • security
    • data security
  • service broker
  • SQL Server Agent
  • statistics
  • sys
  • t-sql
    • xml
  • tools
    • data masking
    • wsus
  • troubleshooting
  • Uncategorized

Pages

  • About SQL Server Science
  • Get Better Help with a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable Example, or MCVE
  • Privacy Policy

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.

To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy

Copyright © 2026 SQL Server Science