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From: Anton Shepelev <anton.txt@g{oogle}mail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.databases.ms-sqlserver
Subject: Make a backup only if necessary
Date: Mon, 27 May 2024 12:59:29 +0300
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Hello, all

I am working on an in-house backup solution for our MSSQL
databases, and have found that a differential backup may
take considerable space (around 1 Mb) even if /no/ changes
have been made to the database since the previous full
backup. Is it possible somehow, before making another
differential backup, to check whether it makes sense, i.e.
whether the database has changed since the previous (full or
differential) backup? In fact, I do not need a criterium,
and a mere necessary condition will suffice.

I want to make sure that my differential backups are not
useless.  One solution is to compare byte-for-byte each new
diff. backup with the previous one, and delete the copy if
it turn out redundant, but I wondered if there were a
simpler method.

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