Posted by Erland Sommarskog on 06/20/07 21:21

Neil (nospam@nospam.net) writes:
> Is there a way to read a backup file to see if it contains a file
> without restoring the backup file?

You can use RESTORE FILELISTONLY to list the backups within a backup file.

> We are missing a record from a table, and I need to find out when it was
> deleted. We have nightly backup files of the database. Is it possible,
> knowing the database name, the table name, and the primary key value of
> the record, to determine if the record exists in a certain backup file?

You need to restore the backup. But you could restore it under a different
name.


--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel@sommarskog.se

Books Online for SQL Server 2005 at
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/downloads/books.mspx
Books Online for SQL Server 2000 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/previousversions/books.mspx

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