Cold backups -- sql server (microsoft)

sql server (microsoft) : Cold backups

stavros
12/15/2006 2:03:40 PM

I'm going to shut down the SQLServer services (SQL 2000) and do a cold
backup of all the databases before performing some system upgrades.
BOL doesn't have much information on cold backups. Is it an absolute
requirement to back up both the data and log files in a cold backup, or
are the data files sufficient? In other words, in a worst case
scenario, if you have only cold backups of the .mdf files, can you
recover the databases?

Thanks -
Stavros

Ed Murphy
12/16/2006 5:16:14 AM

[quoted text, click to view]

If you have a spare machine, you could test it by copying just cold
backups of the .mdf files to it.

Aren't the log files usually a lot smaller than the data files anyway,

Russ Rose
12/17/2006 1:06:39 PM

[quoted text, click to view]

Definitely backup the tlog file. If space is your issue, shrink the file
down for the backup then expand it again after the upgrade is complete.

Before I understood how to properly shrink databases (SQL 7 ~ 8 yrs ago) I
used to rename the log file and when services were restarted, sometimes a
new file was created, the rest of the time the database was considered
corrupt. Since then I would never trust saving just the data file.

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