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Published: 29 Jul 2004
I have a corrupt datafile ("fractured block"), and the database would not come up at all until I altered the tablespace offline. The datafile failed all DBVerify runs with that same error. All of the recovery methods I've found say to "restore from the last good backup." Unfortunately, our backups have turned out to be unusable, and I was not using archivelog mode. Is there any other method of recovery, short of sending the datafile to Oracle?
Your situation is exactly why backup and recovery should be one of the DBA's top priorities. You can always reload and reconfigue software, but in many cases, it is difficult, if not impossible, to recreate data. I don't think you have any way to recover this file. You can contact Oracle Support, and they can use a utility to recover the data in the datafile, but from what I've heard, they charge a lot of money for this type of work.
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