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I see this is a pretty common error, but I'm still not able to solve it. I have a SharePoint 2010 site collection in my prod environment, which I backed up using the stsadm backup command, and I'm trying to restore it to my beta environment to an existing sharepoint site using stsadmin restore with the -overwrite parameter. When I run the restore command I get this error:

The operation that you are attempting to perform cannot be completed successfull y. No content databases in the web application were available to store your sit e collection. The existing content databases may have reached the maximum numbe r of site collections, or be set to read-only, or be offline, or may already con tain a copy of this site collection. Create another content database for the We b application and then try the operation again.

Microsoft has 2 methods for resolution posted below, and I'm trying method 2, however that does not help: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926321

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2 Answers 2

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This is SP2010 SP1 bug; once you delete the first site collection, it is not deleted. PowerShell can help you

Get the Guid using 

 Get-SPDeletedSite

and then remove by 

Remove-SPDeletedSite –Identity fc5ff8c9-2012-4fd8-b801-9a0efb0e71cd

I hope this helps.

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It's a duplicate of this and I think all your options are described there.
Personally, I went through them all and decided either to overwrite an existing site collection or create a new content database just for the restored site collection.

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  • If I understand correct, the post you refer to refers to a situation when you want to restore a site to the same content database. The case in this post involves backup from one environment and restore in another (ergo, another content database). But if a previous backup restore has been done between the environment, the I agree with you that it is a duplicate.
    – Robert Lindgren
    Commented Dec 17, 2013 at 17:55
  • It does not need to be the same content database. If a site collection has been restored to another content database in the past, it cannot be restored there again (unless it overwrites the previous site collection). In the link that I provided there is a method of deleting the site collection and then removing it from deleted site collections. That's the only way for restore to succeed. I assume it's not the obvious: "The existing content databases may have reached the maximum number of site collections, or be set to read-only, or be offline".
    – tsap
    Commented Dec 17, 2013 at 23:59

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