Another SharePoint Upgrade Success Story
This is one of those “this is what I did and it worked but don’t necessarily try this at home” posts.
Here is the scenario… We had a WSS 2.0 environment that had some data deleted (remember the days of no recycle bin!). There was no SharePoint backup file and no WSS 2.0 development environment. Playing the role of MacGyver, I collected what I did have: a SQL Server backup file for the content database, a WSS 3.0 development environment, business users interested in moving to WSS 3.0 (and even more anxious to recover the lost data), deep SharePoint expertise and a positive attitude (at least when this started J). Oh, and did I mention that the prescan was NOT run before the SQL backup was taken?
This is what I did:
· Copy the SQL Server BAK file locally to the WSS 3.0 environment (this was a standalone instance so SQL Server was installed on the SharePoint server; obviously if you have a dedicated SQL Server server then put it there)
· Restore the content database using native SQL Server restore functionality
· Remember, this content database had not been prescanned (with the Microsoft prescan tool) and I have no environment to perform this. What to do? Go to Sites table in the content database and for the sites listed any that have not been prescanned will have a value for ‘BitFlags’ of 0. Change it to 262144 (the indication that it has been prescanned). Again, I am not saying this is right; I’m just saying that it worked for me!
· In SharePoint Central Administration, create a new web application then a new site collection
· Still in Central Administration, delete the content database associated with the new web application
· On the SharePoint server, run the stsadm command to attach the restored content database to the url
o stsadm –o addcontentdb –url <newsiteURL> -databaserver <databaseServer> -databasename <databaseName>
· The stsadm process will take a while to run if the content database is large
· When the process is complete, go to the url and validate that you have a recovered (and upgraded) site