URGENT: ORA-01113 when attempting to start database 1

[slicendice]

Hi
A customer has just phoned me in a bit of a panic as when he tries to start his Oracle database he is getting the error message:
ORA-01113: file 10 needs media recovery

Its an Oracle 8.1.6 database running on Win 2000. The bad news is, the database is not running in archive log mode and apparently the last backup was done way back in May!!!!

My understanding of things is that basically he's a bit buggered - as without a backup and archive log files he can't recover very much at all.

The problem has only just occurred - is there any other way of recovering a corrupted datafile?

Thanks very much

 

[karluk]

You may still be able to recover, if the current redo logs haven't overwritten any data that's needed for the recovery.

The first thing you should do is take a complete offline backup of all datafiles, control files, and redo log files. Taking a backup of the current database will give you something to restore in case your recovery attempts messes up your database even more.

Then I would mount the database and issue the command

recover datafile data_file_name;

You will need to query the name of data file 10, which is the one that needs recovery. Do this with the command,

select file#, name from v$datafile;

If this is your lucky day, Oracle will have enough information to perform the recovery, and you will then be able to open your database.

Please note that if data file 10 is part of your RBS or TEMP tablespaces, then you have other recovery options.

 

[slicendice]

Many thanks karl!

Fortunately the current redo logs were able to do the trick - much relief all round!

Thanks again

 

[karluk]

You were lucky this time. Don't allow your good fortune to prevent you from scheduling regular database backups. Then you won't wake up some morning with an unrecoverable database.

 

[NJCommutr]

Karluk, thanks very much for your post. I found myself in a near-identical situation, no good backup and noarchivelog. Your solution worked perfectly !! After that, I immediately put the database in archivelog mode, then took a full cold backup.

Thank you !!