Backing up MDB and LDF files

Administrators are often tempted to backup *.MDF and *.LDF files in MS SQL Server. SQL Server uses these files to store data and logs and in many cases, moving these files from one machine to another machine restores the database as well.

Although, this approach works in many cases, it is NOT a good idea to backup these files with an expectation that you will be able to restore a database to the point of crash. This is because SQL Server, like many other databases, store a lot of information in memory. This memory image is not flushed to the disk until a checkpoint occurs. This is the reason, you hardly see any changes to the *.MDB or *.LDF files even after you modify data in SQL Server. As a result, if you only backup *.MDB and *.LDF files, you will miss the information residing in memory.

A better approach to backup SQL Server, or any RDBMS for that matter, is to use the recommended backup strategy provided by the vendor of your database. In case of MS SQL Server, this is using the BACKUP DATABASE command. This commands creates a local copy of the database to a *.BAK file, which can then be copied to a remote machine using Syncrify or any other backup tool.

When you are using Syncrify to backup, we recommend using the SQL Server Plugin for Syncrify, which runs the BACKUP DATABASE command in the background, creates a *.BAK file and then moves that file to a remote machine.