SQL Interview: 67 Backing up transaction log after DB failure

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Administration Level: Advanced

Question:

A storage failure occurs and during recovery, a data file from your database was lost.

Transaction log backups are taken every 5 minutes.

Periodically, when data is being loaded into the database, Bulk Logged mode is used. At the time of the failure, the database was still in bulk logged mode.

Can you still back up the transaction log after this failure?

Answer:

No. When you use Bulk Logged mode, transaction log backups can only be performed when the data files are still present.

2025-07-31