Recently i had to restore a SQL Server 2008 R2 Database to a Database in another machine and i ended up getting the message
“The Database was backed up on a server running version 10.50.1600. That version is incompatible with this server, which is running 10.00.1600″ .
Then when exploring the cause of the reason ,i found that the database that i took the backup was from SQL Server 2008 R2 .
It was the same Backup file that was used to restore in another machine and interestingly , the other machine had SQL Server 2008 .
The Version 10.50 is SQL Server 2008 R2 whereas 10.00 is SQL Server 2008.
Also , the same SQL Server Management Studio 2008 was used to access both the server instances ( 2008 and 2008 R2 ) .
It was a bit confusing for me since i was able to access the SQL Server 2008 R2 Express from the SQL Server Management Studio 2008 , but was unable to restore it to the SQL Server 2008 Express ,but then realised that since the on-disk format is different the versions and the restoring the SQL Server 2008 database to SQL Server 2008 R2 is possible .
I also had another option to generate the Create SQL Scripts and execute it in SQL Server 2008 and 2005 and it worked fine too
To find the version of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 , connect to SQL Server 2008 by using SQL Server Management Studio and execute the query
SELECT SERVERPROPERTY('productversion'), SERVERPROPERTY ('productlevel'), SERVERPROPERTY ('edition')
Here’s a nice reference of the list of SQL Server versions
Did you know the codename of SQL Server 2008 R2 ?? .Its “Kilimanjaro” – I remember this word when ever Rajnikanth dances for the song “Kilimanjaro” in Robot /Endhiran (lolz).

5 comments
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by mssqlserver, Senthil Kumar. Senthil Kumar said: Restoring SQL Server 2008 R2 Backup file to SQL Server 2008 http://bit.ly/9GWzY2 via @AddToAny [...]
Oct 11, 2010
parasa87
Como restaurar un backup de una versión 10.50.1600 a la versión 10.00.1600 que tengo en mi PC?
Dec 14, 2010
Senthil Kumar
Generating SQL Scripts will do it better .
Dec 15, 2010
K Wells
What does this mean:
“but then realised that since the on-disk format is different the versions and the restoring the SQL Server 2008 database to SQL Server 2008 R2 is possible ”
I can’t make sense of it.
I need to back up from R2 and restore to 2008 (not R2).
Jan 26, 2012
Senthil Kumar
This means that , you can restore the Backup file (2008) to 2008 R2 Server …
Feb 16, 2012