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Collation in BACKUP and RESTORE Operations

If you restore a database, RESTORE uses the collation of the source database that was recorded in the backup file. The restored database has the same collation as the original database that was backed up. Individual objects within the database that have different collations also retain their original collation. The database can be restored even if the instance on which you run RESTORE has a default collation different from the instance on which BACKUP was run.

If there is already a database with the same name on the target server, the only way to restore from the backup is to specify REPLACE on the RESTORE statement. If you specify REPLACE, the existing database is replaced with the contents of the database on the backup file, and the restored version of the database will have the same collation recorded in the backup file.

If you are restoring log backups, the destination database must have the same collation as the source database.

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