CHAPTER 2 n MAKING DATABASE BACKUPS 27
Full Backup
Regardless of the recovery mode used, you need to start with a full backup. Both log
backups and differential backups require a full backup to use as a starting reference
point. No backup scheme is complete without at least one full backup.
I ran into one situation where the only resolution was to restore to a specific point in
time. The client said, ???No problem. We keep six months??™ worth of backups on tape.??? It
turned out to be six months??™ worth of transaction log backups; there were no full backups
anywhere on tape. Explaining to the client that there was no way I could restore the
transaction logs was one of the most painful discussions I??™ve ever had as a consultant.
Creating a simple, full backup statement in T-SQL is intuitive:
BACKUP DATABASE AdventureWorks TO DISK = 'D:\data\AW.bak'
There is a very serious issue with this statement, however. The default behavior for
a backup command is to append to the existing file. If you use the previous statement
in a recurring job, the AW.bak file will continue to grow until it consumes all of the disk
space.
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