WSS 3.0 Backup / Restore

WSS 3.0 has a great web interface Backup/Restore facility.

But for the life of me, I don't have any joy restoring using this (the backup was a mission, fiddling around with folder permissions etc!). Why is online documentation so scarce, and why can't this thing just work!

After many hours, I figured the best way to achieve backups/restores is via stsadm. There are plenty of Microsoft articles that explain how to do this. It works a charm, unlike the web based one. But to throw a spanner in the work, I had this prob...

The situation:

• Windows 2003 R2 Evaluation 60 day edition (using Virtual PC 2007)
• WSS 3.0 installed
• Client created site on the Eval server, and the server locked up after 60 days
• Client wanted this site, recreating the site again from scratch not an option
• Needed to move the site onto another VM machine without a locked console so the client could continue development of the WSS site

Since the console was locked up, I didn't have much choice but to:

• Remotely turned off all the WSS and SQL services (Computer Management - connect to another computer)
• connected to the c$ share of that server, and copy the .mdf and .ldf files off the server

I the followed these instructions:

• http://msmvps.com/blogs/cgross/archive/2007/05/09/moving-a-wss-3-0-site-to-a-new-farm.aspx
• Make sure that you create your new server with EXACTLY the same server name, site name, web app name, port etc etc etc. This was the thing that took me ages to work out!
• Another link to check out http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/WSS/en/library/3fc0177c-b364-4a1b-b3af-4c5560afe50c1033.mspx?mfr=true