Restore DB Error RESTORE HEADERONLY is terminating abnormally

Question

I have taken backup of SQL Server 2008 DB on server  and download them to local environment   I am trying to restore that database and it is keep on giving me following error            An exception occurred while executing   a Transact-SQL statement or batch     Microsoft SqlServer ConnectionInfo       ------------------------------ ADDITIONAL INFORMATION       The media family on device    C  go4sharepoint 1384 8481 bak  is   incorrectly formed  SQL Server cannot   process this media family  RESTORE   HEADERONLY is terminating abnormally     Microsoft SQL Server  Error  3241       For help  click    http   go microsoft com fwlink ProdName Microsoft SQL Server amp ProdVer 09 00 4053 amp EvtSrc MSSQLServer amp EvtID 3241 amp LinkId 20476   I have tried to create a temp DB on server and tried to restore the same backup file and that works   I have also tried no  of times downloading file from server to local pc using different options on Filezila  Auto  Binary   But its not working   After that I tried to execute following command on server   BACKUP DATABASE go4sharepoint 1384 8481  TO DISK   C  HostingSpaces dbname jun14 2010 new bak  with FORMAT   It is giving me following error      Msg 3201  Level 16  State 1  Line 1 Cannot open backup device    c  Program Files Microsoft SQL   Server MSSQL10 SQLEXPRESS MSSQL Backup    C  HostingSpaces dbname jun14 2010 new bak   Operating system error   123 The filename  directory name  or volume label syntax is   incorrect    Msg 3013  Level 16  State 1  Line 1 BACKUP DATABASE is   terminating abnormally    After researching I found the following 2 useful links     http   support microsoft com kb 290787 http   social msdn microsoft com Forums en-US sqlsetupandupgrade thread 4d5836f6-be65-47a1-ad5d-c81caaf1044f   But I am still not able to restore Database correctly   Any help would be much appreciated   Thanks

User · Answer

This type of error will come when you try to upload backup data from a higher version to lower version  Like you have backup of SQL server 2008 and you trying to upload data into SQL server 2005 then you will get this kind of error  Please try to upload in a higher version

User · Answer

I had a similar problem but I was trying to restore from lower to higher version  correct   The problem was however in insufficient rights  When I logged in with  Windows Authentication  I was able to restore the database

User · Answer

I think you have 2 separate problems  1  with restoring and 2  with creating  For 1  you could try checking to see if the file was transferred properly  one easy way would be to check the md5 of the file on the server and again on the local environment to see if they match

User · Answer

You can check out this blog post  It had solved my problem   http   dotnetguts blogspot com 2010 06 restore-failed-for-server-restore html     Select   Version    It had given me following output Microsoft SQL Server   2005 - 9 00 4053 00  Intel X86  May 26 2009 14 24 20 Copyright  c    1988-2005 Microsoft Corporation Express Edition on Windows NT 6 0    Build 6002  Service Pack 2    You will need to re-install to a new named instance to ensure that you are using the new SQL Server version

User · Answer

This error can be caused by the permissions to the file  which you should check  however recently I noticed that the same is thrown if the file has been transferred and windows has marked the file as  Encrypt Contents to Secure Data    You can find this by bringing up the  bak file properties and clicking the advanced button  it appears as the last check box on the dialog   Hope that helps someone

User · Answer

I ran into this issue and my problem was a bit more involved    Originally I was trying to restore a SQL Server 2000 backup to SQL Server 2012  Of course this didn t work cause SQL server 2012 only supports backups from 2005 and upwards    So  I restored the database on a SQL Server 2008 machine  Once this was done - I copied the database over to restore on SQL Server 2012 - and it failed with the following error  The media family on device  C  XXXXXXXXXXX bak  is incorrectly formed  SQL Server cannot process this media family  RESTORE HEADERONLY is terminating abnormally   Microsoft SQL Server  Error  3241   After a lot of research I found that I had skipped a step - I had to go back to the SQL Server 2008 machine and Right Click On the database that I wanted to backup   Properties   Options   Make sure compatibility level is set to SQL Server 2008    Save   And then re-create the backup - After this I was able to restore to SQL Server 2012

User · Answer

In my case  the backup file was compressed  but the file extension didn t indicate this  didn t end in  zip   tgz  etc   Once I decompressed my backup file I was able to import it

User · Answer

Cannot open backup device  c  Program Files Microsoft SQL Server MSSQL10 SQLEXPRESS MSSQL Backup  C  HostingSpaces dbname jun14 2010 new bak    The error is quite self-explanatory  The file C  program files     Backup  c  Hosting     is incorrectly formatted  This is quite obvious if you inspect the file name  Perhaps ommit the extra space in your backup statement   BACKUP DATABASE go4sharepoint 1384 8481  TO DISK  C  HostingSpaces dbname jun14 2010 new bak  with FORMAT   Note there is no space between   and C

User · Answer

My guess is that you are trying to restore in lower versions which wont work

[sql] Restore DB — Error RESTORE HEADERONLY is terminating abnormally.

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