Ruslan Sudentas This video is start-to-finish walk-trough of creating a SQL Server database backup and restoring it back using SqlBak.com. Please watch Full screen.
A cold database backup is when you make a simple copy of the data and log files. For this to work, the database should be taken offline first.
This is the opposite of the hot database backup that is the regular backup performed while the database is in use. In SQL Server it is usually done with the BACKUP DATABASE command.
Imagine how cool would it be: you are on vacation on a beach when you receive a panicked email from your client telling you he has lost all his data. You take your smartphone, log in to sqlbak.com, press “Restore” next to the last backup, and in a few minutes tell the client that his database was restored. This is as close to James Bond as a database administrator could ever get!
If your SQL Server transaction log (LDF) file is too big – you are doing something wrong. As technet puts it:
Typically, truncation occurs automatically under the simple recovery model when database is backed up and under the full recovery model when the transaction log is backed up. However, truncation can be delayed by a number of factors. For more information, see Factors That Can Delay Log Truncation.