Backing up a file or table?

Is a file the same thing as a table?
Backup Database xxxx
file = 'whatever'
to somedevice
error:
file 'whatever' is not a database file for database 'xxxx'
'whatever' is a table in the database, but is it a file?
My goal is to backup only a few tables in a DB...not all of them.
Thanks,
Don
sql 7.0 or 2000
You can not backup at the table level, only DB, File or Filegroup. You
might want to BCP out the data from the table(s) in question if you don't
care about all the other data. You can however do periodic File or
Filegroup backups. That means you can create a new filegroup and place the
table(s) in that filegroup. Then you can backup that filegroup on a
different schedule than the rest of the db. But that does not mean you can
stop backing up the rest of the db or the logs. They are all required to do
a proper Filegroup backup or restore. See more details in BooksOnLine.
Andrew J. Kelly SQL MVP
"DonSQL2222" <DonSQL2222@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:FD970E6A-41E8-4C53-82E6-A7BAE70AFB47@.microsoft.com...
> Is a file the same thing as a table?
> Backup Database xxxx
> file = 'whatever'
> to somedevice
> error:
> file 'whatever' is not a database file for database 'xxxx'
> 'whatever' is a table in the database, but is it a file?
> My goal is to backup only a few tables in a DB...not all of them.
> Thanks,
> Don
> sql 7.0 or 2000
sql