On 25 June 2010 16:28, Dennis C <dcswest@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Greetings; > As I've been doing for quite some time, backed up my database as > such: /opt/local/lib/postgresql84/bin/pg_dump -c -f ./Trading-Access -Z 5 > Trading-Access > But then when I tried restoring it my usual way as > such: /opt/local/lib/postgresql84/bin/pg_restore -d Trading-Access > ./Trading-Access > it causes the error: pg_restore: [archiver] input file does not appear to be > a valid archive > So in trying: /opt/local/lib/postgresql84/bin/psql Trading-Access < > ./Trading-Access > it causes the error: invalid byte sequence for encoding "UTF8": 0x8b > Thanks, If the output file is in custom format, that last step shouldn't work since custom format isn't parsable by psql. That would only work if it was dumped in plain format. Your original dump specifies a compression level, but you didn't specify "-F c" for custom format, which would use the compression level. Is your file human readable? Try running "file Trading-Access" on the file. What does it say? Thom -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general