What's major difference between export and backup and when to use backup and when i must use export? When I was working with backup,I found export and backup have ability to save your current data.But there must be some difference between them.
3 Answers
Both are for to backup the content in sharePoint,however the backup done through content db will restore the exact instance you have taken backup of whereas the export will create a new instance of the content. Means from export the siteID,ListID all changes and backup through content db the id's remains the same
After consoluting with our partners I found following difference: 1-Export gets data from SharePoint and backup gets data from Database 2-Export is cross-version but backup works only in same version I hope this helps :)
-
If you use export, test to be sure you can import. I have used export and import to copy sites and occasionally I cannot import a site I exported: It gets errors. I recall one site where this happened and when I looked at the site with SharePoint Designer, there were documents that were uploaded (or maybe attached) that were sitting in he site outside of document libraries. I could see them in the tree in the All Files view. Once I deleted those, I could then export and import. Strange. May 4, 2017 at 10:18
Backup-SPSite is generally used when you want to replicate the entire site collection (including all subsites) to an existing web application.
Export-SPWeb is generally used when you want to replicate just a single subsite to an existing site collection.
Also below links are worth to read for other major differences:
Similar Question: SharePoint 2010: What is the difference between backing up a Site Collection and exporting a Site Collection?