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Blog > Acceleration > Clearing a transaction log

Clearing a transaction log

To clear the transaction log of a SQL2000 database:

BACKUP LOG [databasename] WITH NO_LOG

This will break the log, and reduce the size of the log file. This is a dangerous operation, and should not be part of a maintenance routine. SQL Server has better mechanisms to manage log file size in almost every case.

For more detail, see:

Managing the Size of the Transaction Log File
Issues with running backup log with no_log or truncate_only in SQL Server.
BACKUP LOG WITH NO_LOG – use, abuse, and undocumented trace flags to stop it