Microsoft® SQL Server 2008 R2 Unleashed

File/Filegroup Backups

Much of our discussion thus far has focused on backing up an entire database, but it is possible to back up only particular files or a group of files in a filegroup. A SQL Server database, by default, has only two files: the data file (with the file extension .mdf) and the log file (with the extension .ldf). You can add additional files and filegroups that contain these files to extend the database beyond the original two files. These additional files are often data files added to larger databases that require additional space. With very large databases, performing a full backup that contains all the database files can take too much time. In such a case, the individual files or filegroups can be backed up separately, enabling ...