How to get the contents of a SQL Server backup file

http://www.mssqltips.com/tutorial.asp?tutorial=105 How to get the contents of a SQL Server backup file (RESTORE HEADERONLY)

Overview
The RESTORE HEADERONLY option allows you to see the backup header information for all backups for a particular backup device.  So in most cases each backup you create only has one backup stored in a physical file, so you will probably only see one header record, but if you had multiple backups in one file you would see the information for each backup. 

Explanation
The RESTORE HEADERONLY option can be simply issued as follows for a backup that exists on disk.

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Get headeronly information from a full backup

T-SQL

RESTORE HEADERONLY FROM DISK = 'C:/AdventureWorks.BAK' GO

The result set would like the following.  As you can see there is a lot of great information that is returned when using HEADERONLY.

ColumnName	Value
BackupName	NULL
BackupDescription	NULL
BackupType	1
ExpirationDate	NULL
Compressed	0
Position	1
DeviceType	2
UserName	TESTServer1/DBA
ServerName	TESTServer1
DatabaseName	AdventureWorks
DatabaseVersion	611
DatabaseCreationDate	10/22/08 13:48
BackupSize	177324544
FirstLSN	414000000754800000
LastLSN	414000000758300000
CheckpointLSN	414000000754800000
DatabaseBackupLSN	0
BackupStartDate	3/19/09 12:02
BackupFinishDate	3/19/09 12:02
SortOrder	0
CodePage	0
UnicodeLocaleId	1033
UnicodeComparisonStyle	196608
CompatibilityLevel	90
SoftwareVendorId	4608
SoftwareVersionMajor	9
SoftwareVersionMinor	0
SoftwareVersionBuild	3077
MachineName	TESTServer1
Flags	512
BindingID	459DDE25-B461-4CFD-B72E-0D4388F50331
RecoveryForkID	E1BF182D-E21A-485A-9E2F-09E9C7DEC9D4
Collation	Latin1_General_CS_AS
FamilyGUID	E1BF182D-E21A-485A-9E2F-09E9C7DEC9D4
HasBulkLoggedData	0
IsSnapshot	0
IsReadOnly	0
IsSingleUser	0
HasBackupChecksums	0
IsDamaged	0
BeginsLogChain	0
HasIncompleteMetaData	0
IsForceOffline	0
IsCopyOnly	0
FirstRecoveryForkID	E1BF182D-E21A-485A-9E2F-09E9C7DEC9D4
ForkPointLSN	NULL
RecoveryModel	FULL
DifferentialBaseLSN	NULL
DifferentialBaseGUID	NULL
BackupTypeDescription	Database
BackupSetGUID	0C6D57F2-2EDB-4DEB-9C10-53C68578B046

If this backup file contained multiple backups you will get information for each backup that was in the file.

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SQL Server Management Studio

• Right click on the Databases
• Select "Restore Database..."
• Select "From Device:" and click on the "..."
• Click on "Add" and select the back file, for this example it is "C:/AdventureWorks.BAK" and click "OK"
• Click "OK" again to see the contents of the backup file, below you can see that there are two backups in this one file