How To Backup a Database Using SQL Server Management Studio

To backup your databases, you can use the ‘SQL Server Management Studio’ GUI or T-SQL query to accomplish the job.

Both are easy to use. Below are the steps on how to do it.

Backing up databases by GUI:

1.) Launch the “SQL Server Management Studio” application

2.) Right-Click on a database that you want to backup

3.) Select the ‘Backup’ option

4.) Choose ‘Disk’ if you want to backup to a disk drive, else choose ‘Tape’ to backup to tapes.

* More information on the backup options can be found here.

Backing up databases by T-SQL query:

1.) Launch the “SQL Server Management Studio” application

2.) Click on the “New Query” icon to create a new query

3.) Type in the following command to backup a database

USE testDB;
GO
BACKUP DATABASE testDB
TO DISK = ‘X:\SQLBackups\testDB.bak’
GO

* For more command information, click here.

4.) Run the T-SQL query