This article focus on suspect SQL Database, a problem encountered sometimes by Database Administrators - DBAs. It is uncommon, but high chance of appearing suddenly. Database administrators find that the SQL database has become inaccessible and made the SQL database suspect mode. 

This suspect mode indicates that the recovery process has begun but has not yet been completed. In such a situation, the administrator doesn't know whether that database will be restored and is not sure what to do next. So here we will discuss the solution to repair Suspect Sql Database. 

Also, we will take the help of a third-party utility SQL Database Recovery to restore suspect pages in SQL server. Now let’s understand some more causes for suspect SQL database.

Reasons Why an SQL Server is market as Suspect 

The suspect SQL Server Database is triggered  for a variety of reasons that are given below:

●    It is possible that the SQL server crashes or restarts during the middle of the transaction, resulting in a corrupted or inaccessible transaction log.

●    An error occurs when the SQL Server log file or data cannot be opened properly.

●    When an abnormal termination has occurred in the database.

●    There is not enough space on the disk.

●    In SQL, rollbacks, and roll forwards are not possible

●    During SQL Server's attempt to open a database, antivirus software on your system already opened the file containing that database.

The above reasons are responsible for the SQL server database suspect error. Now let’s start discussing the techniques to Repair Suspect Sql database.

How to Recover Database From Suspect Mode in SQL Server           

It is possible to deal with the suspect made in two ways - first using SQL Server Management Studio and second recovering the SQL database using a direct way.

1. Run SSMS and connect to the database.

2. Click on the New Query option.

3. Now enter the following code in the Query Editor window to turn off the suspect flag on the database and set it to EMERGENCY:

EXEC sp_resetstatus ‘db_name’;

ALTER DATABASE db_name SET EMERGENCY

NOTE: Click on the next solution if you cannot set emergency mode on the database.

4. There is a possibility that a suspect database is not corrupted. The following code DBCC CHECKDB command can be used to determine whether the database is corrupt or not. If the suspect database is corrupted then we have to repair suspect SQL database.

DBCC CHECKDB (‘database_name’)

If there are any consistency errors in the database, this statement will report them and recommend running the minimum level of repair.

It is necessary to set the database into 'Single User Mode' before you begin the repair process to prevent other users from making changes to the database.

5. Execute the following command to bring the database into Single User mode and roll back the previous transactions:

ALTER DATABASE database_name SET SINGLE_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE

6. You should take a complete backup of the corrupted files to avoid the loss of any data.

7: Use DBCC CHECKDB's REPAIR_REBUILD option to quickly repair missing rows in nonclustered indexes after putting the database in SINGLE USER mode. Also, you can use it to rebuild an index, which is a time-consuming operation.

DBCC CHECKDB (‘database_name’, REPAIR_REBUILD)

Run DBCC CHECKDB with the suggested repair option if REPAIR_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS is recommended. The syntax is as follows:

DBCC CHECKDB (‘database_name’, REPAIR_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS)

8. Get the database into the Multi-User mode:

ALTER DATABASE database_name SET MULTI_USER

9: Refresh the database server.

Your database connection should be established once you have completed these steps. In case of any data loss, you must have the database backup to restore from (Step 6).

What to Do if this Manual method does not work

The above-mentioned steps may not work if your server databases have become severely corrupt. At this moment, you should use a third-party application. So try restoring the database by using SQL Database Recover Tool. This is developed by experts to recover suspect pages in SQL server. 

Also, it provides different facilities to repair suspect SQL database. This recovery software recovers deleted and advanced deleted records from SQL database. Also, It provides the facility to preview the database content before saving it to the destination folder.

Conclusion

So we have talked about the SQL server database suspect mode. Also, we have repaired the suspect pages in SQL server. We have utilized two techniques on how to recover database from suspect mode in SQL server. 

First is manual and another is direct recovery method. The manual way may not be fully secured and there is a chance of more errors. So you should operate the direct recovery method to repair suspect SQL database.