Kjell Rilbe napsal(a):

> Hi,
>
> To copy a database with a few million records in some tables we did a
> backup and restore.
>
> Backup took about 20 minutes, but restore took several hours, Most of
> the time spent restoring indices.
>
> Am I right in assuming the index DATA is not backed up, but only index
> DEFINITIONS, so on restore every index has to be rebuilt?

Yes, that's exactly how it works.

> If so is there any way I can do this faster another time?

Yes, take a look at nbackup - physical backup utility provided since
v2.1 (there is a good paper about it in FB project Documentation). But
the speed comes with a price. gbak does logical backups (only metadata
and your data) so after restore you'll get compact, optimized "healthy"
database, while database restored from nbackup is exact physical copy of
your original database including all garbage etc.

> FB 2.1 currently. Any difference in FB 2.5?

No.

best regards
Pavel Cisar
IBPhoenix