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As an admin, you may often need to restore the SQL database of your organization. Your SQL database may suffer an accidental deletion, face corruption, or come across hardware failures. To recover your database from all such mishaps, restoration becomes an inevitable necessity. However, you should have proper knowledge of the restoration process to reduce downtime and ensure business continuity.

At times, despite having in-depth technical knowledge, you may come across several SQL database restore failed errors. The need is to resolve them and get back to work at the earliest. This blog acts as a complete guide to troubleshooting these errors manually and through SQL repair tools.

What does it mean to restore an SQL database? 

The term refers to restoring data from the database after the latter becomes corrupt or damaged. It helps to restore data to a recent healthy state while maintaining data integrity and the availability of the database. A suitable way in this regard would be to restore the database using a backup file, which could be:

* Full backup: The copy of a database that gives a snapshot of the data at a particular time 

* Differential backup: Contains all the data modifications made since the recent full backup

* Transaction log backup: Includes the entries of all the transaction logs since the previous log backup, making way for point-in-time recovery

Even while using a recent backup, there may be instances of the failed database restore error. Here is why you often face this error:

SQL database restore failed errors: Reasons and Resolutions

Below are some possible reasons that can result in this error, followed by their resolution.

Database Backup issue, causing Error 3169

You cannot restore your SQL Server database backup to a previous version. Suppose you have a database backup taken on a SQL Server 2019 instance. If you want to restore it to a SQL Server 2017 instance, it is not possible. Instead, you will get the following error:

To resolve this issue, you can copy the database hosted on a later SQL Server version to the previous version. Considering that you have two SQL Server instances named SQL_1 (Later Version) and SQL_2 (Previous Version), here are the steps:

• Download the latest SSMS versions on both SQL_1 and SQL_2
• Do the following on SQL_1
• Look for the database that you want to restore under Object Explorer and right-click it.
• Navigate to Tasks > Generate Scripts

• Choose the option to Script entire database and all database objects

• In the resulting Set Scripting Options window, click the Advanced button

• Under General, look for Script for Server Version to choose the version of SQL_2, and click OK

• Under Specify how scripts should be saved, select the Save option that suits you the best to
• Continue with the wizard and finish it.
• Next, do the following on SQL_2
• Create a database schema by using the scripts generated on the SQL_1 server
• Disable triggers and foreign key constraints on the database tables
• Enable identity insert if the table shows identity columns
• Import the data into the corresponding tables that you just exported
• After completing the data import operation, enable triggers and foreign key constraints
• Disable identity insert for all the affected tables 

This will resolve the database restore failed error in the small-to-medium-sized database. Databases having a larger size may face Out of Memory Issues in SSMS. In this situation, you can opt for SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) for this purpose.

Corrupted database backup file

The backup file used for database restoration becomes corrupted due to network or hard disk issues, malware intrusion, or incomplete backup. Here are some errors that you can come across if a corrupted backup file is causing a failed database restore:

These errors can result from malware or virus attacks, or underlying hardware issues, such as network storage, hard disk failure, etc. Reviewing Windows System logs and hardware logs can give better insight into the errors, allowing you to take the right action. Here are a few resolutions you can try to get rid of these issues:

• Use the Restore Header statement to go through the backup file
• Enable the Backup CHECKSUM option to minimize these database restore errors
• Enable trace log 3023 to enable a checksum while using backup tools to run backups
• Create a new backup set or locate a different usable backup file.

Database accessed by multiple users

Multiple users are accessing the database that you want to restore. To resolve this issue, you should set the database to Single_User mode. Here is the T-SQL command for the same:

ALTER DATABASE Database_Name SET SINGLE_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE

Multiple database connections are opened simultaneously

More than one connection is active in the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), which could affect the restore operation or block the database. To resolve this issue, make sure only one SQL Server instance is active at a time.

Improper permissions to access the database

Lack of proper database access permission and roles, such as dbcreator or sysadmin, to carry out the restore process can be a prominent reason behind the ‘SQL database restore failed error’. You may get the following messages: “RESTORE DATABASE permission denied” or “User does not have permission to perform this action”. To fix these issues, assign proper permissions for file access and correct server roles.

Use third-party backup applications to resolve the restore failed errors

To deal with errors occurring during database restore, you can choose the SQL Server tool called Virtual Backup Device Interface (VDI). It extends support during the backup and restore operations. Here are its prominent features:

• Enables independent software vendors to integrate their products with SQL Server
• Engineered to ensure maximum reliability and performance
• Provide a complete SQL Server backup and restore functionality
• Ensure a full range of hot backup and snapshot features

Issues with manual fixes may not guarantee complete resolution.

Manual troubleshooting of the database restore errors can be productive to some extent, but they have several shortcomings:

* Extreme reliance on backup may backfire in case of a missing or corrupt database backup file

* SQL methods like CHECKSUM or RESTORE VERIFYONLY can only find issues, but fail to fix them

* The scripting method needs core technical knowledge that may not be suitable for beginners

* These manual fixes will not work for situations demanding urgent resolution

* Scripting or manual data import methods run the risk of data loss

* Extreme dependence on roles, configuration, and file system access acts as a major drawback

* These methods are often less productive for large databases

To deal with all these limitations, switching over to a third-party SQL database repair tool would be an ideal move.

The advantages of using an advanced SQL database repair application

Seeking the help of an upscale tool can help you resolve the SQL database restore failed error with ease. Here are the multiple features of this software that will ease your error resolution tasks.

• Restores your database if manual restore using log files fails
• Repair the database from data corruption and recover data
• Save the repaired database to a different database in CSV, HTML, and XLS file formats
• Save the restored database using Windows or SQL Server Authentication methods
• Save selected database objects from the list of recoverable objects

When searching for SQL recovery tools that serve these and many more advantages, products like Stellar Repair for MS SQL can be a viable option.

Conclusion

Several reasons may prompt admins to restore SQL databases, such as hard disk failures, virus or malware intrusion, damaged database, and so on. At times, the restore operations may fail due to different errors that may halt the functioning of the organizations. Some of these common errors include database backup issues, corrupted database backups, multiple users accessing the database at once, and wrong roles and permissions for database access, among others.

Admins opt for varied step-by-step fixes to deal with these errors after viewing Windows System logs and hardware logs. However, these resolutions have certain limitations in terms of time consumption, data loss, dependence on permissions, and more. To avoid these SQL database restore failed errors from halting the restore operations, admins prefer leveraging SQL database repair tools. This is where Stellar Repair for MS SQL can be a feasible option.