One of our customers DB growth reached to 8 GB. I removed the unwanted column which stored the 5GB of Images in a table. Now I checked the table space by using the command

sp_spaceused

it is reduced normal. But the database size still remains 8 GB not even a KB reduced.

Shall I use the following batch?
————————–Batch starts——————-
ALTER DATABASE [databasename] SET RECOVERY Simple
WITH NO_WAIT
GO
–shrink the mdf file
DBCC SHRINKFILE (N’name of the MDF file’ , 3000)
GO

ALTER DATABASE [databasename] SET RECOVERY FULL

–rebuild index…
————————–Batch ends———————

Thanks & regards,
Vijay

I stumbled upon this article through some clicks while searching for something else. This is amazing explanation! Thanks a lot.

Sushmita

USE
DBCC SHRINKDATABASE
DBCC SHRINKFILE

‘ For e.g…. D:\MyLargeDBs\MyCustomerDB\Customers.NDF

/* ********** Hope it helps …. ! **********

Regards,
Aashish.Vaghela
******************************************** */

Here’s what you need to do.
1. Ask your client whether this BAK has been created with SQL 2k, 2k5, or 2k8 ?
2. Try to RESTORE the BAK to the Database using RESTORE wizard in SQL 2k5 or 2k8.

3. I could barely understand from your broken statements, what exactly are you trying to do when u say “When i create .df and .ldf file when i execute to create .mdf and .ldf it is not created these two files.”

4. .LDF is a Transaction file & should be created once the MDF database is created & ATTACHED. Try running a few SELECT queries & you should be in business.

5. Right-click on the DB, after it is ATTACHED & check its’ PROPERTIES to see if the SQL DB engine allocated a Transactions file to the DB.

6. Make sure, you have OWNER permission on the DB.

Hope this helps … !

Regards,
Aashish Vaghela

If I were in your position, I would rather restore that BAK file on a medium where there is lot of
space available.

Is there any possibility of restoring a .bak file without .ldf…I mean to say .bak file containing .mdf and .ldf due to space constraint is it possible to restore only .mdf..

how much .ndf files create in one database?

Regards,
Mangesh

How can we check , wehther the data presnt or not in the files?

One more thing that I added to your script above was

DBCC UpdateUsage(MyDBName) &&

SP_UpdateStats

However, my 2nd question on July 28th, 12:46am still remains ? Any idea of Automating this process of monitoring & truncating the DB LOG (.ldf) file … ? Is is possible to set some TRIGGER to monitor the LOG Size & the moment it grows beyond a certain pre-defined limit, it gets truncated & the DB is Shrunk …. ?

See if you can share some insight on to this part ??

–find the name for the log file
use database
select name,physical_name from sys.database_files

–change the recovery model in order to shrink the database…otherwise it will not work…

ALTER DATABASE [databasename] SET RECOVERY Simple
WITH NO_WAIT
GO
–shrink the log file
DBCC SHRINKFILE (N’name of the log file’ , 50)
GO

ALTER DATABASE [databasename] SET RECOVERY FULL

–rebuild index…

if this operation is done in the evening when nobody works it would be great:)

One more thing, in reference to the request above.
Is there a way we can use OSQL (SQL 2000) or SQLCMD based scripts to accomplish this task of monitoring the LOG file.

I’m planning to create a simple DOS BATch file to perform such a task. If regular DOS BAT file isn’t going to be sufficient, then probably we can think of creating a VBScript file to do the same. What do you say ??

Regards,
Aashish. Vaghela

Once again, looks like I’m running into some sorts of trouble
keeping the LDF Log file under check. I was wondering if I can
automate the process by some trigger. This trigger can fire, at a specific time whenever the size of the LOG file exceeds a particular value in MB. Lets say if the size of the LOG file (.LDF) reaches 100MB, it should be auto-truncated.

Can this be achieved…?? I think so. However, I’m not much of a T-SQL Programmer. So, I’d definitely appreciate if I can get help on such a TRIGGER.

Thanks.

Aashish. Vaghela

i go through your blog.and i use

USE DatabaseName
GO
DBCC SHRINKFILE(, 100)
My log file size was 38 gb after this command it is 34 gb.

while it should be 100mb.

do the needfull for further steps

It is more than mdf and ldf.

First of all, let’s discuss the shrinking of data files (data means mdf and ndf). You will encounter two different methods, that use the same mechanism internally: DBCC SHRINKFILE, DBCC SHRINKDATABASE.
Let me give you and example that actually happened a while ago to a customer: they were scripting a database, so we ended up having a database that was defined as having 100 GB data file (only one data file), but with no data in it. Because the customer wanted to save space, we tried to shrink the database by using DBCC SHRINKDATABASE. It had no effect whatsoever, because you cannot go lower than the initial definition of the database (100 GB in our case). By using DBCCSHRINKFILE we could actually modify the data file to a lower value, so the database size was lowered.

Second of all, for the log files (ldf). A transaction log file has a different structure and behavior compared to a data file. Every now and then, some portion of the transaction log is marked as “not needed anymore”, so it can be overwritten. This is called truncation. It simply tells SQL Server that there is space within transaction log that can be reused. If you need to recover that space and give it back to the OS, you can only do that after the log is truncated (which, in turn, relates to recovery model and whether you have taken a backup or not).

I do apologize for making it a bit too technical.

best regards,
calin