I guess the title should be, ''You can't restore a SQL Server 2000 database on Denali.''  I had the occasion just today to recover some data from a backup I took way back in 2008 (!) for a colleague who was still on 2000 at that time (again, !).  When I tried to restore the backup on my local Denali instance, I received this error ...

Upgrading a database with read-only filegroups Earlier today, I complained that I should be able to upgrade a database with read-only filegroups.  In this case an upgrade from, say, 2000 to 2005 is blocked because the engine can't update the system schema / structure.  Since I am trying to protect the data, not the system schema, I ...

The DMVs are a great way to get a closer look at what is actually going on in your system.  In particular, for some operations, SQL Server populates the percent_complete and estimated_completion_time (in milliseconds) in the DMV sys.dm_exec_requests.  This can be very useful if you want to know how long your BACKUP or RESTORE will take ...