Updated: 2008-07-24
This topic covers tools and methods for backing up and restoring My Sites. My Sites are specialized sites within Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 that are personalized for each user. My Sites are enabled by default, and every user in an organization has a unique My Site.
Back up My Sites
There are three methods for backing up My Sites:
Back up the My Sites SSP. A complete backup of My Sites can be performed by backing up the associated SSP. For more information about how to back up an SSP, see Back up SSPs (Office SharePoint Server 2007).
Back up the My Sites content database. We recommend that you host My Sites on a separate Web application. Accordingly, you can back up the content database associated with the My Sites Web application separately from other components in the SSP. This method helps protect the My Sites content from a database server failure. Other SSP components such as user profiles, the SSP database, and the search database are not included in the backup. For more information about how to back up a content database, see Back up databases (Office SharePoint Server).
Back up the My Sites site collection. This method may be preferred if:
My Sites occupies only a small part of the content on the SSP and backing up the complete SSP would take too much time.
It is important that My Sites backups are performed on a different schedule from the rest of the SSP content.
Site collection backups are usually slower and more resource-intensive than backing up either the SSP or the content database. For more information about how to back up a site collection, see Back up and restore site collections by using built-in tools (Office SharePoint Server 2007).
Restore My Sites
The methods for restoring My Sites depend on how My Sites were backed up.
See Also