Backing Up the Transaction Log

As SQL Server must write all transactions to the transaction log, backing up the log is crucial. Not only does this permit recovery of these transactions, the act of backing up the log also truncates, or clears out, the inactive portion of the log. This allows room for further transactions. The log can be set to auto grow, but this should not be relied on, because if it's unchecked it can fill all available disk space, and can be problematic to shrink back to a reasonable size.

NOTE

In simple recovery mode SQL Server periodically truncates the log without backing it up. Any transactions that are thus purged are unrecoverable. Transaction log backups are not available in this mode.

Backing Up Transaction Logs with ...

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