I have several partitions in a filegroup. Can I restore only certain partitions?
Kimberly: Restores are always at the page-level, file-level, filegroup-level, or database-level. So, if you design/architect for partitioning AND recovery, you can do a piecemeal restore and even restore PART of your partitioned table (because it's on different filegroups).
The idea would be to restore the critical core components (primary, required tables like products/customers, and the critical part of your large, partitioned table—like 2020 and 2019, for example). You could bring that online and then later gradually restore 2018, 2017, 2016, etc. But, again, only if 2019, 2018, etc. are on different filegroups. The restore would be filegroup-based.
For more information, check out this resource.