What
You suddenly find that your backup files are larger than your
database.
Why
There is no way that a single full database backup
file can be larger than the database size. A full backup
contains the entire database's data files that are used (see this
test), and the
active portion of the transaction log during the backup. It
is thus possible that the backup file is significantly smaller than
the database size, but definitely it cannot be larger.
The reason for the large backup file is because the file
contains multiple backup sets. A backup file will contain
multiple backup sets if you repeatedly back up to the same file,
without using the INIT or FORMAT options. See Cumulative backups
for more details
Document history
7/24/2008 | Initial release. |