Steve Jones - Editor (7/15/2009)

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My guess is your database is in the full recovery model and you are not making log backups.

The short answer is that you should:

1. Backup the transaction log with truncate_only

2. Make a full backup immediately

3. shrink the log file with dbcc shrinkfile back to a reasonable level

4. Set up log backups every hour or two.

You ought to read about how to manage transaction logs as well: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/64582/%5B/quote%5D

Steve, you really should not give the advice to use truncate_only anymore. Remember, that has been deprecated in 2005 and is no longer functional in 2008.

The recommended procedure now is:

1. ALTER DATABASE {your database} SET RECOVERY SIMPLE;

2. CHECKPOINT -- possibly do this a couple of times to roll the VLF to beginning of file

3. Shrink the log file using shrinkfile to a reasonable size

4. ALTER DATABASE {your database} SET RECOVERY FULL;

5. Perform a full backup now to reset the log chain and allow for transaction log backups

6. Set up frequent log backups (every hour or two, or more often)