A safe approach to database recovery in case of IAM chain corruption in SQL Server 2008

SQL Server 2008 is the best tool for database developers and administrators as it incorporates some of the major improvements over the earlier versions. It has support for large data sets and the ability to handle multiple users. The new 'Performance Studio' provides you with a collection of tools for easy monitoring and troubleshooting the system. It allows you to build up an efficient policy management system and help database administrators in carrying out various administrative tasks. Regardless of all these benefits, there are various contingencies that lead to corruption in the SQL databases. The potential reasons behind database corruption include virus infection, hardware failures, operating system bugs, etc. As a consequence, all the valuable objects in the SQL database become inaccessible. In order to recover your lost invaluable data, you should perform SQL recovery through proficient third-party software.


IAM chain corruption is a common occurrence on SQL Server 2008. This is usually accompanied by the below given error by DBCC CHECKDB:


"Msg 2576, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 
The Index Allocation Map (IAM) page (0:0) is pointed to by the previous pointer of IAM page (1:153) in object ID 0, index ID -1, partition ID 0, alloc unit ID 72057594042384384 (type Unknown), but it was not detected in the scan."


The system table 'sysallocunits' usually has a reference to the first IAM page, the root page, and the first page. The above error says that metadata does not include a reference to the first IAM page in the IAM chain (page 1:153). This indicates corruption in the 'sysallocunits' system table.


If you try to use the 'repair_fast' and 'repair_rebuild' options in this case, you may get no significant results. In order to resolve the issue, you may try the following series of steps:

•     Start a transaction
•     Write the rowcounts for all system objects and tables in your database.
•     Now use CHECKDB for repairing the database.
•     Make sure that the problem is resolved and the error is not seen again
•     Rerun DBCC CHECKDB to verify the database.
•     Examine the rowcounts once again.
•     Commit the transaction

The 'repair_allow_data_loss' should be the minimum repair level for this case. If the problem persists, you may try professional SQL 2008 database recovery software. These third-party tools extensively scan SQL databases to recover damaged or inaccessible objects, including tables, views, indexes, constraints, triggers, etc. Moreover, they are compatible with Windows 7, Server 2008, Vista, Server 2003 and XP.

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How to Recover Database When MDF file get corrupted ????

The data loss from the database is a very panic situation that occurs without any warning message. It can corrupt or damage our data stored on our hard drives or on any storage media. The database may be corrupted due to hardware failure, application failure, improper system shutdown, media read errors, software failure, power failure, virus attack and many other reasons. In such case you need to use an advanced database recovery software to recover and repair corrupted database. In case of MDF file corruption, you may face any of the given below error messages:-

“Windows could not start the SQL Server”
“MDF is not a primary database file”
“Server can’t find the requested database table”
“Database Can’t Be Accessed”
“The file *.mdf is missing and needs to restore”
“The execution of a full-text query failed”.

Solution: To repair and restore corrupted .mdf file by any of the above error message follow given below steps:

Fix Hardware Issue: To fix the error message check your hardware setup if found any problem with the hardware then repair or replace it by new one and fix the problem.

Run DBCC CheckDB Command: If the problem is not related to hardware then run dbcc checkdb command without any clause and then run again dbcc checkdb command with the proper repair clause.

Restore from Backup: After running the dbcc checkdb command and you still getting an error message then restore database from the latest and updated backup. If you have no any backup then you should try an advanced mdf recovery utility to repair and restore corrupted .mdf file.

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Use Advanced SQL Recovery Tool to Repair MDF Files

If you are regularly using Microsoft SQL 2008, then you might have faced several situations wherein you are unable to mount a SQL Server database. Such cases are sometimes cause very serious problem such as database corruption or complete inaccessibility of the SQL database thereby making your database very insecure. These corruption scenarios can arise due to various reasons such as automatic system shutdown when the database is running, power failure, virus infections, hardware issues, human errors etc. In such cases, you should find the cause of database corruption and try to repair SQL. If you are unable to repair SQL(.MDF) file, then you should use an advanced MDF file repair software to perform SQL database recovery.

Consider a Practical scenario wherein you try to open a SQL database while using MS SQL Server 2008. However, database does not open. An error message appear as a result, which is:

"Database '%.*ls' cannot be opened due to inaccessible files or insufficient memory or disk space. See the SQL Server error log for details."

Cause:

The root cause of above error message is that the database could not be mounted because some resources or files are missing.

Resolution:

To resolve above error message, you should repair MDF file. To do this, you need to perform the given below methods:

Check Error log: Firstly, You should check error log to get the details about resources such as disk space, memory, permission failure, etc that may have caused the above problem.

Confirm the location of SQL Database files: You should check the location of MDF or LDF files and verify whether Database Engine account has required credentials to access these SQL Database files.

Restart Database: Finally, you should restart the SQL Server database with the help of ALTER DATABASE query. This query sets the SQL Server database to online.

Above described methods should be able to set the SQL database up. However, if you still are unable to mount the database then you should use a SQL repair tool to repair SQL Server database. Such MDF database repair software are read-only in nature.

Stellar Phoenix SQL Database Recovery software is an SQL database repair tool that repairs MDF file and NDF file alike. Specifically designed for MSSQL Server 2000, 2005, 2008 and 7.0. This MDF file repair tool restores various database objects such as collations, tables, stored procedures, triggers, defaults and many more. In addition, this repair mdf software preserves the relationship among the database tables.

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Recover SQL Server Database from Corrupted Table

Sometimes when you want to update or delete SQL server database table and got an error message that shows your SQL server database table has been corrupted. This may happen by the several reasons some of them are improper system shutdown, virus attack, hardware failure, power failure and many more. At this situation you will be unable to access your SQL server database table. For fixing this problem you should use an advanced SQL server recovery software that will repair and restore your damaged SQL server database table.

Consider a practical scenario wherein, you may encounter the given below error messages while your are trying to update, delete or open an SQL server database table:

“Error: 644, Severity: 21, State: 5
Could not find the index entry for RID '1613b1000000100' in index page (1:189), index ID 7, database 'TestDB'..
Error: 8646, Severity: 21, State: 1
The index entry for row ID was not found in index ID 7, of table 2009058193, in database 'test644'.”

Particularly the above error message occur on the non-clustered index of Microsoft SQL server database but sometimes this problem also occurs with the clustered SQL server database database.

Resolution: For restoring corrupt SQL server database table, you have four option which are given below:

Fix Hardware Issue: Check the hardware of the system if you find any faulty hardware then replace it with the new one.
Restore from Backup: Restore it from the latest backup, if backup is clean and updated.
Run DBCC CHECKDB: Run this command to fix the problem.
Re-built Indexes: If possible then rebuilt indexes of table but it is not the better idea.

After performing three above steps and you are still unable to fix the problem then the best idea is to buy an advanced third party SQL recovery software to fix the problem.

Stellar Phoenix SQL Database Recovery is an MDF recovery software that is able to repair MDF as well as NDF files from all instances of corruption. It repairs corrupted MDF, NDF files created in SQL Server 2000, 2005, and 2008. This MDF file repair tool is capable of recovering various database components such as tables, stored procedures, views, collations, queries, triggers, etc. It is compatible with Windows 7, Vista, Server 2003, XP, and 2000.

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Master Database Corruption Of SQL

The installation of MS SQL Server is composed of several databases, each which hold its own importance. Master database, TEMPDB, Model database, these are few of them. But the most important one is Master database.

The Master database is the one which is responsible for carrying information like pointers to the other databases, login accounts and so on. This comprises of the system catalogs to maintain the data like system wide configuration settings, disk space, other database existence information, file allocations and other similar and so is the most important part of the SQL Server installation. Without this file, the starting up of the server is practically impossible. The file extension of this file is mdf.

In few of the cases for users, this becomes hard to resist that the master database is corrupt. The improper backup of the same add to the grief of the user and create the need of SQL recovery. There are number of reasons for the database corruption like improper shutdown of system, virus attack etc. and strangely, some of the reports also state that the bulk use of DELETE from a table makes it corrupt.

If the master database is corrupt, then surely others also do have the problems and thus the need of MDF recovery comes to an immediate. However you can try out to rebuild it with rebuild.exe and restore it.

But, if in any case, this procedure doesn’t work properly, then you need to use the third party MDF Repair software. Also in complete success scene of rebuilding the master database, the other databases may be lying in the corrupted state for which again these SQL recovery software are needed.

These software have the magnificent ability to run the scanning mechanism to repair and restore the MDF file. The software uses the powerful scanning algorithms to give the stupendous results. They can benefit you with complete MDF recovery in each and every instance of corruption with the instinctive user interface.

You can have safe SQL recovery with their read-only nature. These MDF recovery utilities are applicable for all the objects of database. With the interactive user interface, this SQL recovery tool eases the users. You can use it for SQL Server 2000.

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SQL Server startup error - “Error – 3414”

MS SQL server is the most well-liked application used to create web-based and enterprise database systems. The primary languages it uses are ANSI-SQL and T-SQL. The main storage unit in SQL Server is database, which is mainly a collection of tables. These databases might get corrupt due to several reasons as unexpected shutdown to application, unexpected system shutdown and virus infection. Thus, it is always suggested to ensure that you have a valid and updated backup of your SQL Server database. In other cases when you don’t find backup as valid or existent while database corruption, then you need the MDF Recovery applications that can restore the original database.

You might receive an error message with your SQL Server database that is similar to the following:

Error 3414, Severity Level 10

Database '%.*s' (dbid %d): Recovery failed. Check the SQL Server errorlog for further information as to the cause.

This is the SQL Server startup error.

Cause

As specified in the error message, it occurs when SQL Server fails to recover listed database from suspect state. You cannot continue working with the database until the cause of error message is fixed. The database remains in suspect state.

Resolution

You should consider following these steps to recover data from such situations:

• You need to first observe SQL Server log for error that might have occurred before error 3414 could occur. This should be performed at first occurrence of error 3414. It could occur due to damaged controller, antivirus application, disk problems and other such issues.
• If you don’t find any information regarding the responsible issues, restore from the last clean backup you have.
• In case, you don’t have any backup or no clean backup is available, scan the damaged SQL Server database using commercial MDF Repair products.
  

MDF Recovery software analyze damaged SQL Server database and perform harmless and successful repair. Besides standard file repair applications, these software give you automated recovery features, file repair power in all cases of database corruption, read-only design, to-the-point documentation, graphically rich user interface and other advanced features.

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