Find out when a database backup was made

Question

Folks,

Assume you receive a disconnected backup of a SQL Server database (2005 or 2008) and you restore that to your SQL Server instance.

Is there a way, is there a system catalog or something, to find out when the last write operation occured on that particular database? I'd like to be able to find out what day a particular database backup was from - unfortunately, that's not really being recorded explicitly anywhere, and checking all dozens of data table for the highest date/time stamp isn't really an option either....

Any ideas? Sure - I can look at the date/time stamp of the *.bak file - but can I find out more precisely from within SQL Server (Management Studio) ??

Thanks! Marc

Answer 1

You can try RESTORE HEADERONLY on your backup file, as described here

that should give you the information you're looking for.