Posted by Erland Sommarskog on 08/22/07 10:38

l0b0 (victor.engmark@gmail.com) writes:
> I'm working on a restore procedure for the case where all MDF files
> are missing, but the LDF files are all intact. A full backup is done
> every 24 hours, and a log backup is done every 3 hours. After
> restoring the last full + log backups, is it at all possible to use
> the LDF files to recover data from that point up to a newer point in
> time?

At that point it may be a little late. Say that disaster strikes and
your MDF file is dead. At this point you can perform BACKUP LOG WITH
NO_TRUNCATE to back up the log. Then you restore and apply all logs
including this one.

> I've found a post which explains how to do this on SQL Server 2000
><http://groups.google.com/group/comp.databases.ms-sqlserver/
> browse_thread/thread/3ef5c7cbc0a83334/f3b0c70811d35ed7>, but step 4
> fails with the following error message:
> BACKUP LOG cannot be performed because there is no current database
> backup.

It seems that Dan left out one point his post. And which point is fairly
obvious: you need to take a full backup of the newly created dummy database.
Since Dan read this group regularly, I hope is able to step in and clarify.



--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel@sommarskog.se

Books Online for SQL Server 2005 at
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/downloads/books.mspx
Books Online for SQL Server 2000 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/previousversions/books.mspx

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