The advice you received was right: you should never just copy the files after the service is stopped.  You need to detach them first.  This is a common error.

If you...

You will have to remove your trx log backup jobs, and also ensure no jobs truncate the log.  Full and differential backups will not break the chain of log backups.

You...

Caught me napping there!    As others have pointed out, msdb..backupmediafamily is the table to look at.

You could use SQL Profiler and capture the Audit Logout events.  You would be able to see the login time and duration easily.

You might want to take a look at the msdb..backupfile table.

If you restore a differential backup, you just need to restore the trx log backups made after the differential backup.  You do not need to apply all the logs made...

Inside SQL Server 2000 by Kalen Delaney/Ron Soukop is a very good detailed look at SQL Server.  It does not just address writing SQL, it also tells you how the...

I don't know about Oracle, but there isn't really a 'backup' mode in SQL Server.

>>  My question is, since these files reside on a RAID 1+0 SAN storage, is there any pupose in having two/multiple data files?

Perhaps the previous DBA wanted to be able...

You could try the File Handle Analyzer utility located at http://www.wilsonc.demon.co.uk/d7fileanalyzer.htm.  Might be able to reveal the process holding on to the files.

Kill the connection using

kill {spid}

?

Seems to work, but I don't know if there's any side-effects.

One possibility for the growth is that you are running DBCC DBREINDEX on one or more large tables.  If so, the growth is unavoidable, since SQL Server needs the space...

A clusterd index determines how that data is physically ordered in the table, and its leaf nodes contains the table data. 

A good metaphor would be the dictionary.  The clustered...

A differential backup contains all changes made since the last full backup.  Thus, in a way, you could say that it contains 'all the log files in one back which...

Alex, I should add that if all you want is to perform 3 backups simultaneously (no compression, encryption etc) and you can read a little C, I suggest you download...