How do I get back some deleted records?

I mistakenly deleted around 2,000,000 records from a remote SQL Server 2008 table. The server is not granting me access to the backup files on the server side.

Is there any way to get back these records?

Is your database in full recovery mode?

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If yes, are you doing transaction log backups?

• If yes, do you have a backup utility like Quest LiteSpeed, Red Gate SQL Backup, or Idera SQLSafe?

• If yes, those utilities can undelete objects from backup files (including the fulls and transaction logs) - but explaining how to use those is beyond the scope of what I can do here. Contact the vendor for instructions.

• If no, restore the full backup and transaction logs as a database with a different name. (Don't overwrite the existing database.) You'll be able to get an up-to-the-second copy of the object before the delete happened, but you'll need to use the stopat part of the restore command to specify when to stop restoring the commands. You need to stop before the delete happened.

• If no, go grab a copy of a log reader utility like Quest LiteSpeed or Apex SQL Log. These utilities can connect to the database server, examine the log file, and help you undo transactions. I'm not sure if the demo versions will work, but the paid ones definitely will.

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If no (not in full recovery mode), restore the last full backup as a database with a different name. (Don't overwrite the database you've already got.) From there, you'll be able to restore whatever records were online at the time of the backup, but you'll lose all of the changes since.

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#995, answer score: 125