MDF Corruption Due to OS Errors or I/O Check Failure

Sometimes you may face system or hardware problems while writing data to or reading from the SQL Server 2000 database. These issues can make your database inaccessible and cause serious data loss. In such situations, all your critical data becomes unusable and you need to opt for SQL database recovery.

While reading from or writing to the SQL Server database, you might encounter the below error message:

“Error 823
I/O error detected during at offset in file ''”

This error message may occur every time when you start SQL Server and access the MDF file.

Root of the issue

Microsoft SQL Server 2000 displays this message when any of the below given conditions are true:

* Operating system problem: A read Windows API (Application Programming Interface) call or write API call isn’t successful and MS SQL Server encountered operating system error which is related to API call.
* I/O logical check failure: This behavior may occur if the read API or write API is successful but particular logical checks on database are unsuccessful. This situation prevents SQL Server to access data from MDF file.
* MDF Corruption: This problem may occur if your MDF file is corrupted and thus SQL Server can not recognize the file and access data from it. This behavior causes serious data loss.

Resolution

There are three possible solutions of this issue:

* If the problem is due to operating system error then you need to fix the Windows API issue. It may require repair or reinstall.
* Use DBCC CHECKDB command to check any logical errors in the database. It is an in-built command in SQL Server to fix application level errors.
* Use SQL Database Recovery software to scan the corrupted database and recover all the inaccessible data from it.

These software are specifically designed to repair SQL database in most of the corruption scenarios. These software come equipped with interactive graphical user interface and thus allow you to have ‘Do It Yourself’ recovery.

These software can recover all the MDF file objects including tables, reports, triggers, stored procedures, constraints, indexes, views etc. They provide absolute results with their read-only and non-destructive design.