Wednesday, March 2, 2011

A small analysis on MySQL database corruption and the possible resolution

MySQL is a reliable and higher secure relational database management system that was developed to deal with much bigger databases. Its improved performance, high speed and connectivity make it a better client-server application that has a support for different back-ends, client programs, and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). But one often faces corruption issues while working with MySQL databases. The corruption may occur due to any reason, such as quitting application in the middle of a write operation, improper system shutdown, hardware issues etc. All these reasons may prevent you from accessing your important databases tables and other objects in the corrupt MySQL database. To recover back all your inaccessible and valuable data in such situations, you need to go for MySQL recovery through a reliable third party utility.

For instance, you may get an error message reading:

"Table './confluencedb/EXTRNLNKS' is marked as crashed and should be repaired"

Causes:

The possible reasons for this error message are-

You may have a limited disk space on the volume where your database is stored
Corruption in some database tables

Any type of corruption in your database may render your database inaccessible. Here, you can use a backup to recover MySQL database and get all your vital data back. You may still try to repair your corrupt database table by following the resolution steps mentioned below.

Resolution:

Follow these steps to repair your MySQL database-
Open up the Control Panel.
In 'MySQL' section, click 'REPAIR' icon against your database's name.

The above steps may help you repair all the corrupt tables in your MySQL database. If the problem still persists, you should take help of an efficient MySQL database recovery tool. These software can easily recover various database objects including tables, views, keys, constraints etc. from your corrupt MySQL database. They support both the MySQL database engines- MyISAM and InnoDB.

Stellar Phoenix MySQL Database Recovery is a comprehensive and highly secure tool that repairs damaged or corrupt MySQL tables created in MySQL 3.x, 4.x, 5.x, and 6.x versions. It enables you to preview all recoverable objects of corrupt MySQL database without even requiring a MySQL installation. It compatible with Windows 7, Vista, Server 2003, XP, and 2000.

Resource: http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/218783