FastBCP 1.6 pulls tables straight out of a SQL Server backup, no restore needed
Exporting tables from a SQL Server backup (.bak) to Parquet without restoring it
FastBCP 1.6 reads a table directly from a SQL Server full backup and writes it to Parquet, with no restore, no SQL Server instance, and no credentials. On a 320 GB production backup, the first open took 2 min 29 s and later ones 0.3 s; a 175-million-row table exported in 29.6 seconds with 24 threads. FastTransfer then loads those files into any SQL Server version or PostgreSQL, sidestepping the version limits of RESTORE.
SQL Server cannot restore a backup on an older version than the one that created it, while Parquet files do not care.