Delete trc files

It only takes a minute to sign up. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. We've noticed a lot of. The date range for these files spans over one day and the total file size of all files together is about 21 gigs. I'd like to free up this space but I'm not sure if I can just delete the files manually through Windows Explorer or if I need to do anything in SQL, like run a command or script.

Any ideas? Server-side tracing is enabled and controlled by using SQL Server system-supplied stored procedures and functions. With these system-supplied processes, you can identify what to trace, when to start and stop tracing, what traces are running, and view trace information stored in the trace file. Setting the status to 0 stops the trace Setting the status to 2 closes the trace and deletes its definition from the server.

If the trace files are no longer in use, then they should be fine to delete. I'd say someone was doing some troubleshooting of an application and forgot to delete the trace files when they were done. A trace file would only be in use if the trace is still running.

If the files are more than a day old then it's a safe bet that the trace is no longer running. If the trace IS running the file will be locked and you won't be able to delete it anyway. Filenames are typically audittrace[datetime]. Just to be sure, have a look at sys.

You should only be seeing your default trace in there if its turned on, with an id of 1. Looking at different articles some one suggested to upgrade to sp4 but if the functionlaity is built in why do you have to upgrade or apply a apatch?????? Gail Shaw. If you're talking about the 5 files of the default trace, there will only ever be 5. When SQL creates a new one, it deletes the oldest, so there's no need for any manual cleanup task.

There is a bug with the code that implmenets the maintenance plan task to delete files. You need to install the update to correct the bug. Meet George Jetson. Both answers are correct, Gails is the most important in that there are only those files and they reused. If you are not at SP2 or higher you would see an issue with deleting backups files.

Trace files have to be controlled and cleaned regularly, otherwise your disk space will be exhausted soon or later. But cleaning trace files may become a hard work, because the trace files belongs to various logging purposes and they are scattered all over the database server, it may cost you a lot of time to find them and delete trace files.

Trace files include core dump, user dump and background dump from grid, rdbms or listener. For the alert log, it's a little different, you can delete or trim it for reducing the size of the file. Please note that auditing files and the alert log are not included in trace files by definition, you have to find an integrated way to delete all trace logs, audit files, alert log and so on. It could be the best tool to do the tedious job.