How to Back Up, Restore a Document Library

Backup and restore are critical factors, and the level of granularity determines how much control you have over the whole process. A welcome addition in SharePoint 2010 backup and restore features is the ability to back up and restore individual Libraries and Lists.

Let's walk through the process of backing up and restoring a Document Library with all of its content.

I have created a Document Library named "HR Document" and uploaded couple of documents to it. See the figure below.

1. First, the backup process is shown, for this browse to "Central Administration" we site and then click "Backup and Restore," as shown below.

2. Click "Export a site or list", this will open a page titled "Site or List Export", as shown below.

3. Now select the "Site collection." If you want to change the web application click on the drop down, and then select the appropriate web application; this should be the web application containing your site collection, and in turn containing the document library. Click "OK".

4. Once done select the site , this is the actual site collection , in case of you want this to be the root site collection select "/".Click "OK". Click on the "No Selection", link for the Lists. This will open a "Select List" list page. Locate your document library (e.g HR Documents) and Click "OK".

5. The "File Location" is supposed to be the place where the backup will be placed. This must be a UNC path, also make sure that the account running Central Administration has read/write rights to this folder. The "backup" folder, shown in the figure below is shared and available.

Use this path in the "Filename" field, and give a name to the backup (e.g hrlibrary.cmp), as shown below. You may want to select the "Overwrite existing files" check box if you want to override any existing files in the path with the same name.

6. Select the "Export Full Security" if you want to export all the detail information like created by, modified by, etc., along with the content itself. If there is no such requirement, leave this option un-checked.

7. In the "Export Versions" drop down, select what kind of versions you want to be backed up. Default is "All versions", you may want to select other type if your requirement does not demand backup of all version of documents.

8. Click "Start Export," to begin the backup process.

9. The page "Granular Backup Job Status" will be displayed as shown below. This page will show the process details. The "Status" under "Current Job" will display "Operation initializing", as shown below.

Depends on the size of the contents, the backup may take a while. In that case you want to come back to this page and hit the refresh. Once done the "Status" under "Current Job" will be changed to "No operation in progress", and "Previous Job" will be showing "Succeeded", provided you did not start any other backup operations before this one has completed. This is shown in the figure below.

10. Restoring a Library / List is not available from Central Administration web site, however this can be done through PowerShell or through STSADM command. Following PowerShell command will restore the backed up library to a designated site.

The two required parameters are "identity" which is the site where the library/list will be restored, and "path", which point to the path of a backed up library/list. Once completed, you will be shown the path to the log file. Please note that site here refers to SharePoint SPWeb which is in fact resides under SPSite.

11. Browse to the newly restored document library. Following figure shows the "HR Documents" library successfully restored. The original document library is also shown below for reference.

Restored Document Library: HR Documents

Original Document Library: HR Documents