mdf file is not updated

Question

mdf file is not updated

linlin-630115

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Points: 450
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November 5, 2008 at 6:39 am

#128501

When I check the physical mdf file on the disk, I'm so surprised that the modified date of the mdf file (meaning the most recent updated date and time) is almost one month ago...
The server is Win2003, SQL Server 2000 Clustered, just one month ago, we refreshed, before it was Win2k, SQL2k cluster, but just 4 days after we refreshed, this file is not updated anymore.. before this I never noticed if it's updated or not..
And it is impossible that there's no data updated because this is an internet banking server.. also because the ldf file is updating, it seems OK..
Maybe the updated data is still on the memory, not updated to the disk? but I can't believe that for such a long time, it's not updated to the disk..
This is happened to all of the databases except there's one database we
So worried about it, if something wrong happened on the server, will these data be lost? I don't want to take the risk..

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Lowell SSC Guru Points: 323518 More actions · Answer 1

the mdf file is open and held open by sql server....only by stopping the SQL Server service would the file date get refreshed....changes happen, but the file is never "closed" the way you would a text file, so the date does not change.

you cans see the same thing in any application, even word or excel...open a file, leave it open a couple of days, and unless it has the "autosave" property set to do soemthing every X minutes, the fiel date would be the same until you really save, even if you have edited over the course of time.

Lowell

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linlin-630115 SSC-Addicted Points: 450 More actions · Answer 2

Thanks so much...

I thought that every checkpoint that the mdf file would be modified and can be shown on the windows explorer..

I was so wrong..

Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 736270 More actions · Answer 3

You should not be looking at the files themselves in terms of managing SQL Server, other than seeing how large they are v how much disk space in free on the disk. All writes, activity, etc. should be checked through SQL Server.

As Lowell mentioned, these are opened by SQL Server and held until you close them or shut down the server.