Quickly restore test/QA SQL Server database My company is releasing new mission critical software.
For thorough QA, we are doing database comparisons.

Our process is:


Restore full backup.
Test code.
Compare.
Repeat.


This database is relatively large, and step 1 can take up to 2 hours.

Is there any method someone could suggest that would speed this up?  We are making minimal changes when the new code is being run and compared.  I'd like to quickly revert back to before the test were run.

Thanks in advance!
I believe you could use database snapshots. Though snapshot can not replace full database backup, since it contains only amended pages from the moment the snapshot was created.

Essentially, you restore the production database onto the development server, take a snapshot, perform whatever test work you need to.  When you need to return to the original state of the database, revert the snapshot.

Here is MSDN articles that describes process of recovery to the state before a snapshot was taken.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189281.aspx