Backup and Restore in SQL Server: Recovery Models, Full/Differential/Log Backups, Point-in-Time Restore and Transaction Log Growth
In FULL recovery only a log backup empties the log: after two full backups the log was still 19.6% full and waiting on LOG_BACKUP, and a 400 MB log finally raised Msg 9002. The full, differential and log chain, how a backup without COPY_ONLY breaks the differential (Msg 3136), ZSTD compression, bringing back 618 accidentally deleted orders from a side database with STOPAT and STOPBEFOREMARK, and untrusted .bak files.
15 Nov 2026
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20 min
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6
