Torn Pages

  • Hi Guys,

    Just a quick question.

    I've been reading about Torn Pages. I haven't had one..yet...but I would just like to know the way to deal with them.

    I understand that they effectively corrupt the database hence requiring a restore.

    Should the first course of action be to back up the active transaction log ? Can this be done with a torn page?

    Many thanks in advance for any input.

    Cheers Graeme

  • Never had one either, so this pure theory.

    Backup the active transaction log is a good idea. It depends on the page that is torn whether it will succeed, but the chances are good.

    Next step is a restore, of course.

    Checking the hard disk would be prudent.

  • Is the Torn Page Detection option useful in SQL 2K?

  • In the process of installing a new high-performance server (fiber optic disk, lot's of ram, new Windows Server 2003 OS, SQL Server 2003), we've been getting "torn page" messages regularly. They indicate a hardware problem ... SQL Server reads back the disk block it just wrote and compares it to what it tried to write. If "wrote and re-read" don't match, you have a "torn page".

    Our hardware VAR believes our problem is an incompatibility between I/O drivers on the fiber-optic disk controller and the latest Windows OS.

    I think SQL Server's perspective is that nothing can be trusted after a "torn page" and you should/must restore the whole server.

    In our case, we're rebuilding/retrying the server with different combinations of firmware / software / hardware trying to find the one that works.

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