Recover old Database

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acatejr@gmail.com - 30 Aug 2005 21:43 GMT

Last summer I had a hardware failure on an Oracle server. We fixed the
hardware problem and lost our Oracle install in the process. One of my
Oracle db users had his own database on the server and in its own
tablespace (unfortunately he wasn't doing backups). Once I got the
server up and running again I re-installed Oracle. I put the new
install in its own directory. The old directory still exists and the
user that last his db wants his data. Is it possible to bring in the
old tablespace with the data into the new Oracle instance? Thanks in
advance.

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fitzjarrell@cox.net - 30 Aug 2005 22:02 GMT

> Last summer I had a hardware failure on an Oracle server. We fixed the
> hardware problem and lost our Oracle install in the process. One of my
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> old tablespace with the data into the new Oracle instance? Thanks in
> advance.

>From your post it is not clear if the user's personal database was

affected by the loss or not. Presumably you can bring such a database
back online; for UNIX/Linux it's a fairly simple task of:

$ sqlplus /nolog
...
SQL> startup pfile="........."

If the database mounts and opens you should be fine. You can also run
dbv against the datafiles to verify they are usable prior to attempting
a startup.

To be honest more information is needed before a definitive answer can
be provided, such as operating system, Oracle version, whether or not
any of the user's database files were affected. Please provide us this
information; as it stands with your post there are too many unknown
variables to allow anything more than guesswork.

David Fitzjarrell

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acatejr@gmail.com - 30 Aug 2005 22:34 GMT

Thanks for the help. I am using Oracle 10g on a Windows XP Pro system.
I am not sure what you mean by knowing if my user's db files were
affected. If you mean are they corrupted on the hard drive the answer
is no. The hard drive storing the data was not the one affected by the
hardware problem. If you mean are they affected in terms of Oracle I
have no way of knowing until I actually get the data back into Oracle.
Thanks again for the help!

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Sybrand Bakker - 30 Aug 2005 23:18 GMT

>Thanks for the help. I am using Oracle 10g on a Windows XP Pro system.
>I am not sure what you mean by knowing if my user's db files were
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>have no way of knowing until I actually get the data back into Oracle.
>Thanks again for the help!

You definitely can't get the data -by magic- in another database.
You would need to retrieve the controlfile of the affected database,
or set up a new controlfile for this database. You would also need to
create a database instance, and setup an init.ora and/or spfile.
You can hardly expect anyone here is going to guide you through this
for free in his own spare time, as you seem to know next to nothing
about Oracle (otherwise you wouldn't have asked whether you can attach
random datafiles to an existing database).
The best advice I can give you is to hire a consultant.

--
Sybrand Bakker, Senior Oracle DBA

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