What is happened? My client has lost the hard disk. He has to restore database.
- He has the full backup of database 15 days old.
- He has ldf (log) file of this database.
- He has NOT mdf file (it was located on that hard disk).
Does it have enough components to restore SQL Server 2008 database, if he used standard options in SQL Management Studio when he did full backup 15 days ago (still database structure has changed)?
Is it possible to restore at least database structure (it's possible to regenerate data from other source) that is was actual on crash moment?
Finally:
1) Is it possible to restore all database (data+structure)
2) Is it possible to restore database structure
Thank you.
ADDED:
LiteSpeed for SQL Server Enterprise (6.1 or 5.x) helped me.
1) The database was restored from full backup (15 days old backup)
2) Then LiteSpeed uses copy of mdf file (see previous step) and saved ldf file (log at crash moment) generates sql script of all changes (DDL/DML).
3) Then this script was applied to restored db in step 1)
Any way there were a lot of issues (bugs) of this application, but it helped to restore at least database structure changes.
Best Answer
If your database is in simple recovery model, then you cannot perform a point-in-time recovery. If the database is not in simple-recovery model and you have log backups right upto the point of failure without a break in the log chain, then you can take a tail-log backup (if LDF is intact and the command succeeds) as pointed out by yrushka and perform a point-in-time recovery of the database without losing any data. If there are no log backups till now, then nothing can be done unfortunately.
Another option is that if you have the database in full/bulk logged-recovery model and no log backups have been taken, then the transaction log can be read using tools (eg. from Idera, LiteSpeed) which will allow you to generate the commands from the transaction log file which can be replayed on the database once it is restored.
Additionally, if you have a full backup and all the log backups till now, then you can restore them till the latest available log backup. Then using log reader tools above, you can generate the rest of the commands from the LDF file and replay them against the database.