Recovering SQL Server database from Error: 5171

MS SQL Server is the most preferred relational database management system by database users all over the world. It provides several benefits such as enhanced productivity, scalability, efficiency, availability, and administrative ease. However, at times the SQL database gets corrupt and, thus, becomes inaccessible. It can happen because of many reasons such as virus infections, human errors, power surges, media errors, etc. In such cases, replace the corrupted database with its updated backup. However, if the backup is not updated and you want the database to be restored urgently then you should use a third-party sql repair tool to repair sql database.

Consider a scenario wherein you open a database file (.mdf) but it fails to open. Instead, an error message is displayed:

“C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\MYDATABASE.mdf is not a primary database file. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 5171) ”

The aforementioned error message conveys that the database is corrupt and is, therefore, not accessible.

Cause: The root cause of this error message is that the database file is corrupt. It may be possible because of various reasons such as power surges, human errors, virus infections, etc.

Resolution: To address this issue, there are few things that you can perform. First of all, take a backup of this corrupted database lest it is further damaged. Then, you should try to check the database consistency using the DBCC CHECKDB utility. For this, you should run the utility without any clause. The command is executed and the reason for corruption is provided. Then, run the utility using the mentioned clause. However, if you are still not able to repair sql, then you should use a third-party ms sql repair tool for mdf repair. Such tools recover corrupted SQL database components after all kinds of logical crash scenarios.