Yip I think i'm pretty much set on the archival idea at the moment, it makes lots of sense for some other ideas we have. Thanks again for your help...

I'm already using a version of that very script 🙂 - plus we are re-indexing only the most recent DB partition which is about 1 months worth of...

George / Paul

Guys thanks for your help with this - I may have indicated this has been a very 'interesting' weekend, the logging issue has been only a part of...

Thanks for that Paul, I'll make a point of having a look at this. I've had an interesting journey over the weekend - highlighting my lack of knowledge on logging....

that and the fact I can be a bit thick sometimes 😉

Second time round -

Must have been some remnants in third transaction logs between backup and dbcc shrinkfile(,emptyfile) and alter database remove file commands

Re-ran transaction log backup, immediately ran dbcc...

SQL Did need the log file, quite desperately in fact, this was down to a bit of a schoolboy error on a colleagues part - ended up filling up 160GB...