Microsoft® SQL Server 2012 Unleashed

File and Filegroup Backups

File and filegroup backups are targeted at databases that contain more than one filegroup. In these situations, the filegroup or files in the filegroups can be backed up independently. If a filegroup is backed up, all the files defined in the filegroup are backed up.

File and filegroup backups are often used for larger databases where the creation time for a full database backup takes too long or the resulting backup is too large. In these situations, you can stagger the backups of the files or filegroups and write them to different locations.

The main disadvantage of this type of backup is the increase in administrative overhead. Each of the files in the database must be backed up, and a complete set of these files ...