Best Way to Fix Metadata Corruption in SQL Server
If you looking for a reliable solution to fix Metadata corruption in SQL Server 2019, 2017, 2016, 2014 and all its below versions? And unable to find an appropriate solution to fix it? Then do not need to worry! We are here to help you out in getting the easy and reliable solution to repair SQL database corruption. Before to start, let’s first understand what is metadata in SQL Server database.
Table of Content
Know What Metadata Is ?
Metadata is simply defined as “Data about data”. You can get all the information of SQL Server Database by running sys.databases.
Select * from sys.databases;SQL Server has number of functions that return the information about the database and its database objects known as Metadata Functions.
Some of the function are given below:
INDEX_COL, OBJECT_ID, OBJECT_NAME, COL_NAME, OBJECT_NAME etc.How Metadata Corruption Occurs?
Metadata Corruption occurs when your system views, procedures, functions, stored procedure get damaged due to some malicious attack, hardware failure, accidental shutdown, fail to update operation etc.
It also occurs when you update index statistics with INCREMENTAL=ON. You will get Error Msg 211 and it is generic metadata corruption. Now there can be several ways to solve this “unable to read metadata the file may be corrupt“ issue as mentioned further.
Detect Metadata Corruption In SQL Database:
Run DBCC CHECKDB command
DBCC CHECKDB (corrupt) WITH NO_INFOMSGS;
GODBCC CHECKDB command is used to check the consistency of the database which help you to prevent from the high level corruption. It checks the physical as well as the logical integrity of the database objects.
Error message will show as below:
Msg 0, Level 20, State 0, Line 0
A severe error occurred on the current command. The results, if any, should be discarded.After the database consistency check, Run DBCC CHECKCATALOG to detect metadata corruption .
DBCC CHECKCATALOG (corrupt) WITH NO_INFOMSGS;
GO DBCC CHECKCATALOG checks catalog consistency for the specified database. You will get a warning message showing corruption in metadata.
How to Fix Metadata Corruption ?
Now that we know what is metadata in SQL database, it’s time to understand the solution. If your backup is free from corruption, you can recover it by restoring backup using BACKUP and RESTORE command. You also need to backup your corrupted database before restoring the previous one to prevent data loss.
Sometimes along with the metadata, the database backup has corruption in too. For this, you have two options, Either export everything present in corrupted database to a new database. Or by manually fixing the system tables.
By doing manually means, you need to alter ‘hidden’ system tables. For this,
- Shutdown the server
- Go to the Advanced Tab in Configuration Manager, add ‘-m;’ to the start of startup parameter string.
- Start the server
- Connect using DAC
The system tables maps three hidden system tables:
- Sysindexes is sys.sysidxstats
- Sysobjects is sys.sysschobjs
- Syscolumns is sys.syscolpars
By running these command you can fix metadata corruption, after this Run DBCC CHECKDB to again check database consistency.
Read More: How to Attach MDF File Without LDF File?
Quick Way to Recover Metadata Corruption in SQL Server:
The safest and quickest way to fix Metadata corruption, is to use SQL Database Recovery Tool. The software recovers corrupted database when the backup as well as meta data is corrupted. It also recovers deleted database objects and table records in SQL Server. You just need to add corrupt .mdf database file to the software to fix metadata corruption from the SQL Database. Also, you can recover functions, views, triggers, stored procedures, tables etc. The tool provides different option for exporting – SQL Server Database, as SQL Server Compatible Script and as CSV file format. In addition, the SQL Repair tool supports SQL Server 2019, 2017, 2016, & 2014 & its below versions.
Prominent Features of the Tool
The tool has several interesting and amazing features. Some major ones are discussed below:
- Recover deleted data from both MDF and NDF files of SQL Database.
- Auto fetch server name while exporting to SQL Server database.
- Display deleted items in red color.
- Offer user-friendly GUI.
- Repair and restores the corrupt MDF files within minimum possible time.
- There is no requirement for technical expertise by the users here.
- There is no risk of data loss while repairing the database files.
- Supports all the versions of Windows OS and SQL Server.
Conclusion
The blog discusses what metadata corruption is and how to deal with it. Metadata corruption can occur due to various reasons like hardware failure, malware attack, virus and etc. The blog covers different ways to recover metadata corruption.
One easy way is to migrate your corrupted database to new database, but this could lead some data loss. So, another way is to use the best and effective software solution for quick repairing of database files without compromising the data integrity or loss.