Unable to do My Site collection back up in SharePoint 2010

Question

I have created a site in sharepoint 2010 where I have created 2 site collections one is "My Site collection" and Another is "Root level" in which all the sites I have created resides

But I am unable to do My Site collection backup and restore although Share Point support site collection back up and restore so I tried from the Site Collection Back up and Restore option available in Central Admin , the problem that I am facing is that after back up the size of the back up file is only very less as compared to the data that I am having in my My site collection i.e. its not getting restored completely

I tried with another approach that I separately tried to take back up of the Profile Database, Social  Database. Sync  Database and restore but that is also not working .

please suggest what should I do to take only My site Collection back up.

Answer 1

Hello Shailesh,

The actual content of the MySites will exist within the content database for the entire web application so the content database is what you would need to back up.  What is it that you are trying to accomplish by doing this?  Are you trying to move MySites to its own web application or is the goal just to have a backup in the event of a disaster?  You may also want to check out the following Microsoft article regarding MySites as it is recommended to have them in their own separate web application:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff729456.aspx#Section4

---

-Chopps

Answer 2

Hi Jimmy,

Thanks for your quick reply.

The thing is that I only want to restore the MySite from one web application to another. We are going to create a new web application where we will be having new site collection with the old MySite data. So we'll be not requiring the old data except the MySite data from the Content Database.

Can you please suggest anything regarding this issue.

-Shailesh

Answer 3

Hello Shailesh,

If that's the case then you can just create a new content database for that web application through Central Admin by selecting Manage Content Databases under Application Management.  Once it's been created you can move the MySites site collection to the new content database using the Move-SPSite cmdlet in powershell.  It would look something like this:

Move-SPSite http://nameofwebapp/sites/MysitesSiteCollection -DestinationDatabase MySitesContentDB

Once it's been moved you can detach that new content database from the original web application, create a new web application (you may also want to create a root site collection after creating the new web app), and mount the MySitesContentDB to that new web application.  That should achieve what you are trying to do.  Let me know if this helps.

---

-Chopps

Answer 4

Hi Jimmy,

In our scenario, we are having the MySite & Site collection contents in one Content Database only. So just for moving the MySite contents, we have to move all the data is not the right approach. So can you please suggest by focusing on this issue also?

Thanks.

Answer 5

Jimmy's suggestion is that you pull just the mysite data from the current content DB and place it into a different content database, which you can then migrate. It will result in only your mysite content being moved into a new db that you can attach to the new web application. That meets the requirement you just mentioned. I dont see the conflict.

Answer 6

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the reply.

How can I identify the MySite data from the Content database, because as I have mentioned previously that I am having the MySite data as well as the Site collection data in the same Content database.

Answer 7

the command to move the data will find it. you need only to identify the URL of the MySite as shown above with the Move-SPSite command.