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- Backup Considerations
- How Will You Verify That the Backups Are Good?
- Which Databases Should You Back Up?
- Where Should You Back Up Your Databases?
- How Often Should You Back Up Your Databases?
- How Long Should You Keep Your Backups?
- How Long Will It Take to Recover a Backup?
- Do You Have a Disaster Recovery Plan?
- Miscellaneous Tape Considerations
- About this Article
Which Databases Should You Back Up?
This advice might sound obvious, but you should back up all your user-defined databases. If creating the database and putting it on a server are important enough, backing it up is also important. What about system databases? You should back up master and MSDB. Having a backup of the model database might be useful, but you don't need to back up tempdb. If you are using replication, you should also back up your distribution database regularly. I recommend that you treat it like any other frequently modified user database.