Missing data after attaching .mdf file Recently, one of my customers had a server crash. Unfortunately, the 3th party who was responsible for the backup was 'forgotten' to schedule a backup of the DB (I know, I should have notice that).

After a professional recovery, I have the .mdf and .ldf files back. I was able to attach them back to SQL Server 2005 Express. At first glance, everything looked ok.

However, the most recent changes (say from one month before crash) are missing. Has anyone seen that before?  Does anyone knows a solution for that? Is it possible that it is still in the .ldf?  I think the recovery model was Simple. 

As a side note, I'm sure that the data was there since there is a printed version. I'm also sure that it is the most recent .mdf / .ldf that is recovered and sent.

I did already several DBCC checkDB with different parameters (every time on a fresh .mdf/.ldf combination of course). I know there is a consistency error somewhere but it doesn't block me to query the last 20000 rows. So expect to find the last records there (or I am wrong here?). The fix of this consistency error is lower prio since it occurs in the older data region. Worst case scenario, we can remove that part.

So, please help me with the missing data.

Thanks in advance!
Did you run a DBCC CHECKDB on the 'recovered' database? Is is consistent? 

Your case doesn't hold water though. In theory the most you could had lost was the transactions present in the log (LDF) but not flushed in the data (MDF). That would amount, at most, to the dirty pages not flushed since the last checkpoint, which would be minutes of data loss, definitely not days. 


  I'm also sure that it is the most recent .mdf / .ldf that is recovered and sent.


Being wrong on this point would be, by far, the simplest explanation. Other explanation is that you deleted the data after attach, which is kind of silly. Or the recovery returned a corrupted MDF that is missing data, but that would fail with corruption errors when trying to query it. I would double/triple check again that is indeed the latest mdf/ldf that was recovered.