Using the dump and load Commands

In case of media failure, such as a disk crash, you can restore your databases if—and only if—you have regular backups of the databases and their transaction logs.

Full recovery depends on the regular use of the dump database and dump transaction commands to back up databases and the load database and load transaction commands to restore them.

Warning!   Never use operating system copy commands to copy an operating database device. Running SAP ASE against a copied device may cause database corruption. Either shutdown SAP ASE, or use the quiesce database command to protect copy operations.

The dump commands can complete successfully even if your database is corrupt. Before you back up a database, use the dbcc commands to check its consistency.

Warning!   If you dump directly to tape, do not store any other types of files (UNIX backups, tar files, and so on) on that tape. Doing so can invalidate the SAP dump files. However, if you dump to a UNIX file system, you can then archive the resulting files to a tape.
Related tasks
Shrinking Log Space