Yes, I was. I see my mistake now. Was confusing TRUNCATEONLY with TRUNCATE_ONLY. Thank you again.

According to books online, "NO_LOG and TRUNCATE_ONLY are synonyms." Yet the NO_LOG command worked when I tried it, but TRUNCATE_ONLY, which is the first thing I tried, did not.

Thank you again, Stacenic. You ROCK!    I'm looking this up right now in books online.

Stacenic, thank you, that did it!! 

I ran that string exactly as you suggested, then ran my dbcc shrinkfile command and set a target...

Stacenic, where will that put the backup that is created?

Vikramnat, thank you very much for the detailed explanation. When you put it that way, it does not look so bad at all!

Perhaps I'll give that a try today, on the...

Not sure if I'm ready to try that. (Yep, I'm a newbie -- and a cautious one at that.)

Some progress. As Vikramnat suggested, I backed up to another server (by UNC name) that had enough space. That was a great success.

I ran a DBCC Shrinkfile command, aiming to get...