angelll
It's actually the mdf that is large. The ldf is very small
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can I shrink a database that is on a USB drive?
I had a database that grew to large for the hard drive that it was on and tried to shrink but it would not shrink. I since moved the mdf and ldf to another drive and actually have started over with the database. I realize now we really need the old data and don't know how to go about recovering the database to the original server without filling up the drive. I know there is a lot of data in the database we don't need.
I have a usb drive connected to the server now and was hoping there would be a way I can move the mdf and ldf files to there and shrink them, then move them back to the original server.
Please help.
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Answers
>The application just said it couldn't complete the maintenance function. I didn't get any error messages.
hopefully you can get some maintenance support to get aware of the error... otherwise no way to know... (you might do some guesswork by using the sql profiler while running the maintenance functions, though...)
I'll try support now. I'm not sure how much they can help with SQL server though. Hopefully they can tell me if I can attach the mdf and ldf while on a usb drive. If I can do that I may be able to run the maintenance tool and delete unneeded execution logs thereby reducing the size of the database enough to run on the server again.
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by: angelIIIPosted on 2007-11-05 at 06:33:24ID: 20216249
is it both the .mdf AND the .ldf that are large, or only the .ldf?
if it's only the .ldf that is large, just copy the .mdf to the server's disk, and use this sql call:
exec sp_attach_single_file_db '<your_db_name>', '<Path_to_mdf_file>'