Microsoft® SQL Server 2012 Unleashed

Media Sets and Families

When you’re backing up to multiple devices, the terms media set and media family are used to describe the components of the backup. A media set is the target destination of the database backup and comprises several individual media. All media in a media set must be of the same type (for example, all tape or all disk). A media family is the collection of media associated with an individual backup device. For example, a media family could be a collection of five tapes contained in a single tape device.

The first tape in the media family is referred to as the initial media, and the subsequent tapes are referred to as continuation media. All the media families combined are referred to as the media set. If, for example, a backup ...