Question

Error 5173: Cannot associate files with different databases

Asked by: siuf

Hello
for different reasons, we backup our DBs with DPM every 4 hours. The backups take place at 6, 10, 14, 18, 22 and 2am. One of my (fortunately test-) DB got a corrupted mdf file at 1pm. I restored the DB with the backup of 10am. When I try to use the mdf of 10am with the ldf of 1pm, I get an error 5173, which is correct. Is it possible to bypass this problem, e.g. to recover the DB state of 10am, and then to somehow replay the log until 1pm ?
Thank you for your help
Pierrot

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Asked On
2009-08-04 at 06:33:42ID24624581
Topics

Databases Miscellaneous

,

MS SQL Server

,

SQL Server 2008

Participating Experts
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Comments
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Answers

 

by: tony_kPosted on 2009-08-04 at 06:52:20ID: 25013776

Are all of the backups mentioned above full backups?

 

by: siufPosted on 2009-08-04 at 06:56:09ID: 25013824

Yes. When I restore the DB with the 10am full backup, it opens fine. I then tried to replace the ldf of 10am with the one of 1pm, thus causing the error 5173.

 

by: tony_kPosted on 2009-08-04 at 07:20:45ID: 25014085

Will take a look around, but it is highly unlikely that you will be able to do what youre asking.

The best practice is to do a full backup once every 24 hours and transaction log backups incrementally (every 4 hrs in your case).  So when the database became corrupt you would restore the full backup from the night before and all the subsequent transaction log backups and that would have gotten you back to 1300.

 

by: siufPosted on 2009-08-05 at 00:22:45ID: 25020837

You mean 'back to 10am' I suppose ? The file got corrupted at 1pm and my last backup is that of 10am. So although I have a valid ldf, it's useless unless it has been backuped ?

 

by: tony_kPosted on 2009-08-05 at 05:26:16ID: 25022548

When a full backup is done it combines the mdf and ldf with a marker so that they know they are a pair.  This is why it is not possible to take an mdf from one backup and an ldf from another.

Sorry, but is seems the best you will be able to get is your last valid full backup.

 

 

by: siufPosted on 2009-08-05 at 05:51:40ID: 25022796

Oops, it seems that I misinterpreted the way the Data Protection Manager works: the Full Backup is that of 22pm, then it takes a log backup every 4 hours. So the last backups I have are a Full Backup of 22pm  and a log backup of 10am. Is it possible to replay the last log (from 10am to 1pm) which is not corrupted ?

 

by: tony_kPosted on 2009-08-05 at 07:05:19ID: 25023557

Have no idea if this will work, but it is worth a try.  In a test environment do the following:
1.  Restore the full backup from the night before
2.  Restore all of the transaction log backups (till 1000 right?)
3.  Detach the database then copy the good ldf file over the restored one.
4.  Then try to re-attach the database.
Never tried this before so give it a shot an let me know.
 

 

by: tony_kPosted on 2009-08-05 at 07:50:07ID: 25024066

If that does not work you might want to try a 3rd party software to try to read the log.  There are programs from Apex and RedGate that read log files.  Both companies offer 30 day free trials of the software so no money will need to be spent.

Again the full backup will need to be restored and then the transaction logs.  Then use the 3rd party software to create a large update script to hopefully make up the difference for the missing data.

 

by: siufPosted on 2009-08-05 at 10:59:27ID: 25026213

Thanks alot for your suggestions. Unfortunately, I always get some kind of error. But good news: I found a way to do it (using AdventureWorks, of course):
- before starting the recovery process, do a tail-log backup. This works even if the database cannot be started because of a corrupted mdf file. The tail-log backup backups the actual log file.
- then restore the database to the last full backup or the last available backup. Important: use the DPM option "Leave the dtabase NOT OPERATIONAL".
- When this step is complete, restore the tail-log. Just use "restore log AdventureWorks from disk='tail-log file location'"
- that's it. If you use Data Protection Manager, the replica is now inconsistent. Run a sync job with consistency check.

Pierrot

 

by: tony_kPosted on 2009-08-05 at 11:03:00ID: 25026248

Very Cool!!!

Tony

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