Webmasters often receive the SQL error 4341 while recovering databases to a point in time.

As a part of our Server Management Services, we help our Customers to fix SQL related errors regularly.

Let us today discuss the possible causes and fixes for this error.

What is SQL error 4341?

Restoring a database to a point in time allows us to roll back the databases to a state prior to an event that was harmful to the database.

In order for this option to work, the database needs to be either in the FULL or Bulk-Logged recovery model and we need to perform transaction log backups.

When the T-log backup have minimally logged transaction, the attempt to recover to a point-in-time fails with the following error:

This means, either the entire log backup should be restored or nothing. Hence, under bulk-logged, point-in-time recovery is not possible from a log backup that contains any minimally logged operations.

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Resolving SQL error 4341 via T-SQL

If we have a full backup and the transaction log has a minimally logged operation, we can try to do a point in time recovery using the commands below:

RESTORE DATABASE ExampleDatabase FROM DISK = 'C:\ExampleDatabase.BAK'
WITH NORECOVERY
GO
RESTORE LOG ExampleDatabase FROM DISK = 'C:\ExampleDatabase.TRN'
WITH RECOVERY,
STOPAT = 'Mar 23, 2020 05:31:00 PM'
GO

This will try to restore the ExampleDatabase database to a point in time equal to “March 23, 2020 at 5:31PM”. But if there are bulk operations we will get the 4341 error.

The restore operation will complete, but it will restore the entire transaction log backup and leave the database in a “restoring” state. We could then either restore additional transaction logs or use the RESTORE .. WITH RECOVERY option to bring the database back online.

SQL Server Management Studio

To restore to a point in time using SSMS do the following:

1. Select the backup and the transaction logs we want to restore.
2. Use the “To a point in time” option to select the point in time we want to recover the database to.

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Conclusion

In short, SQL error 4341 triggers while recovering databases to a point in time. It generally happens when the T-log backup have minimally logged transaction. Today, we saw how our Support Engineers fix this error.