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No content databases are available for restoring this site collection. Create a new content database and then try the restore operation again.

When you try to restore the backup of a site collection multiple times to the same content database using stsadm, you may get the error:

"No content databases are available for restoring this site collection. Create a new content database and then try the restore operation again."

In the Microsoft Site its has been mentioned that to restore the same site collection multiple times, new content databases have to be created. This is because, the globally-unique identifiers (GUID) for lists are preserved in the backup file and reused during restore, but the content database requires list GUIDs to be unique. Therefore, you cannot restore a site collection twice to the same content database, and must instead use a different content database.

There are two workarounds for this issue:

1. Make the site you want to restore multiple times, as a template and apply the template to new sites, so that all the data in the template is also carried over to the new site.

2. If you don't want to make the site as a template, then follow the steps to restore into the same content database.
   (i). Create the site (destination site, into which you want to restore the source site collection) using the Central Administration Page -> Create Top Level Website. Do not apply any template to this site.
   (ii). Backup the source site as a FWP (Frontpage Web Package) using the SMigrate Tool.
   (iii). Now restore this backedup site to the new site (created without applying template) using SMigrate Tool. The site collection is restored on to the same content database.

   One thing to be noted here is that the Site Settings are not restored and you have to add the users to the site manaully (whom you want to access the site), whereas with stsadm restoration, the users are also restored. Still, instead of creating new content database each time you want to restore the same site, adding users sounds much better. Doesn't it?

//Akila.

Comments

 

Pradeep Sethi said:

I am assuming that you are talking about WSS 2.0. I am getting this error in WSS 3.0 and it doesn't have any Smigrate thing,

thanks,

November 21, 2007 4:28 PM
 

Jenny Everett said:

When backing up a site collection and restoring it in the same SharePoint 2007 (MOSS) web application

March 6, 2008 9:36 AM
 

Ayman said:

Gr8 Article

June 24, 2008 3:57 AM
 

Steve said:

Brilliant - really found this helpful, thanks muchly.

Worth mentioning that I came up against the 10MB template limitation which can be got round using this command

stsadm -o setproperty -pn max-template-document-size -pv 20000000

the 20000000 is the no. of bytes. I found this here:

sharepoint.microsoft.com/.../Post.aspx

Cheers.

July 8, 2008 5:04 AM

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Posts (c) their respective authors. Everything else (c) 2007 SharePoint Experts