Back Up and Restore Full-Text Catalogs and Indexes

Applies to: SQL Server

This topic explains how to back up and restore full-text indexes created in SQL Server. In SQL Server, the full-text catalog is a logical concept and does not reside in a filegroup. Therefore, to back up a full-text catalog in SQL Server, you must identify every filegroup that contains a full-text index that belongs to the catalog. Then you must back up those filegroups, one by one.

You can retrieve the properties of the full-text indexes by using the following SELECT statement, which selects columns from the sys.fulltext_indexes and sys.fulltext_catalogs catalog views.

USE AdventureWorks2022;  
GO  
DECLARE @TableID int;  
SET @TableID = (SELECT OBJECT_ID('AdventureWorks2022.Production.Product'));  
SELECT object_name(@TableID), i.is_enabled, i.change_tracking_state,   
   i.has_crawl_completed, i.crawl_type, c.name as fulltext_catalog_name   
   FROM sys.fulltext_indexes i, sys.fulltext_catalogs c   
   WHERE i.fulltext_catalog_id = c.fulltext_catalog_id;  
GO  

When a full-text index is created, it is placed in one of the following locations:

• A user-specified filegroup.

• The same filegroup as base table or view, for a nonpartitioned table.

• The primary filegroup, for a partitioned table.

To find the filegroup of full-text index on a table or view, use the following query, where object_name is the name of the table or view:

SELECT name FROM sys.filegroups f, sys.fulltext_indexes i   
   WHERE f.data_space_id = i.data_space_id   
      and i.object_id = object_id('object_name');  
GO  
  

After you find the filegroups that contain the indexes of a full-text catalog, you need back up each of the filegroups. During the backup process, full-text catalogs may not be dropped or added.

The first backup of a filegroup must be a full file backup. After you have created a full file backup for a filegroup, you could back up only the changes in a filegroup by creating a series of one or more differential file backups that are based on the full file backup.

To back up files and filegroups

• Back Up Files and Filegroups (SQL Server)

• BACKUP (Transact-SQL)

Restoring a backed-up filegroup restores the full-text index files, as well as the other files in the filegroup. By default, the filegroup is restored to the disk location on which the filegroup was backed up.

If a full-text indexed table was online and a population was running when the backup was created, the population is resumed after the restore.

To restore a filegroup

• Restore Files and Filegroups (SQL Server)

• Restore Files and Filegroups over Existing Files (SQL Server)

• Restore Files to a New Location (SQL Server)

• RESTORE (Transact-SQL)

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