For any SQL Server DBA who’s been in the field for a long time, you know that the exercise of restoring backups taken in SQL Server 2000 (and even SQL Server 2005 without using the CHECKSUM option) was many times a sweat-filled lottery. You usually gambled and/ or prayed to your respective deity that your backups would actually work. Why? Because you knew that restore failures were all too common. Despite SQL Server’s assurance that all was well because you had already verified your backups with the RESTORE VERIFYONLY option. So why was this the case? Why did restore operations fail so frequently? Let’s delve a bit more into the innards of the RESTORE VERIFYONLY and CHECKSUM options to find out.