Help, my database is corrupt. Now what?

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Home » Article Discussions » Article Discussions by Author » Discuss content posted by Gail Shaw » Help, my database is corrupt. Now what?

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Help, my database is corrupt. Now what?

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Posted Friday, December 28, 2012 4:23 PM

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Last Login: Tuesday, May 14, 2013 1:23 PM
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Yes, potentially.

You'd have to do the following:

- extract all inserts performed after the table was emptied
- restore the database to time just before the corruption occurred
- manually merge in the post-corruption inserts, taking care of duplicates etc

Tedious.

However, how would the corruption have removed all records in the table but still allow inserts? By 'corruption', do you mean 'someone accidentally deleted all the records'? That's the only way your scenario can occur IMHO.

Thanks

Paul Randal
CEO, SQLskills.com: Check out SQLskills online training!
Blog:www.SQLskills.com/blogs/paul Twitter: @PaulRandal
SQL MVP, Microsoft RD, Contributing Editor of TechNet Magazine
Author of DBCC CHECKDB/repair (and other Storage Engine) code of SQL Server 2005

Post #1401092

michael merrill

Posted Friday, December 28, 2012 4:49 PM

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Last Login: Monday, February 11, 2013 12:52 PM
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Thanks Paul. That is what I thought.

The idea that the table was actually corrupted (not by a user- but say a disk array error) and it still allowed inserts is the paranoid DBA in me talking! But just because you are paranoid, doesn’t mean... Wink

Wink

I have just seen DBs get corrupted, and they function just “fine”- But most likely not this sort of scenario.

So you think that if a table had issues, SQL would not allow the inserts? If so, that is good. I would love a crash at that point instead of a silent failure.

What is bothering me is that SQL does not tell you right away that there is DB corruption. I run CheckDB once a day on all the production servers, but I would much rather know in 30 seconds!

What tool would you use to read the logs and merge the data back together in my hypothetical case?

Again Thank you! This site has saved our bacon more than once.

M

Post #1401093

Posted Friday, December 28, 2012 4:57 PM

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You wouldn't read the logs. You'd have the corrupt database, and the restore pre-corruption database and then you'd manually merge the data in the two tables.

Paul Randal
CEO, SQLskills.com: Check out SQLskills online training!
Blog:www.SQLskills.com/blogs/paul Twitter: @PaulRandal
SQL MVP, Microsoft RD, Contributing Editor of TechNet Magazine
Author of DBCC CHECKDB/repair (and other Storage Engine) code of SQL Server 2005

Post #1401095

Posted Saturday, December 29, 2012 2:20 AM

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michael merrill (12/28/2012)

The idea that the table was actually corrupted (not by a user- but say a disk array error) and it still allowed inserts is the paranoid DBA in me talking! But just because you are paranoid, doesn’t mean... Wink

Wink

Depending on how badly and what has been corrupted, the inserts may run fine or they may fail. If they run fine then the inserts will be logged normally (and hence present in log backups), if they fail, you get blatant error messages

What is bothering me is that SQL does not tell you right away that there is DB corruption.

Sure it does. The instant that any query encounters corruption you get an error in the error log (823 or 824 are the more common). However, if you don't read the corrupt page, SQL has no way of intuiting that a page on disk that it has not read has been damaged by the IO subsystem.

CheckDB, because it reads every page in the DB, will find all corrupt pages. Normal queries running against the DB might not use the pages that are damaged and hence will never notice that they're corrupt

Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server 2008, MVP
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability

We walk in the dark places no others will enter
We stand on the bridge and no one may pass

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