BACKUP LOG cannot be performed because there is no current database backup

Working with SQL Server you face a  lot of different error messages. Some of them can be solved in a minute, others required more time. In this blog post, we are going to talk about error messages like “BACKUP LOG cannot be performed because there is no current database backup.” Here is a full error message:

Msg 4214, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
BACKUP LOG cannot be performed because there is no current database backup.
Msg 3013, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
BACKUP LOG is terminating abnormally.

Or, if you are using SQL Server Management to backup your database you will receive the following message:

BACKUP LOG cannot be performed because there is no current database backup

Solution: BACKUP LOG cannot be performed because there is no current database backup

It has to be admitted that you can get this error message when your database runs under the simple, full, or bulk-logged recovery models.

So, the reason that you receive this error message is that you have never performed a full backup of your database. In spite of, this you are trying to backup the log only. That means that all you need to do is to perform a full backup of your database. You can do it using the following T-SQL Commands:

BACKUP DATABASE Adventureworks
TO DISK = 'D:\Adventureworks.bak'
GO
BACKUP LOG Adventureworks
TO DISK = 'D:\Adventureworks.bak'
GO

Also, you can perform database backup using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS): right-click on the database you need to backup, select “Tasks”, and then “Back up…”. Choose “Full” backup type, then specify a backup destination place and click “OK”.

Pass the same step to make a transaction log backup, but select “Transaction Log” instead of “Full” in the “Backup type” field.

To avoid this error we recommend you to use SQLBackupAndFTP to make SQL Server database backups automatically. With the help of SQLBackupAndFTP, you can backup your database according to your schedule and all backups will be sent to the selected destination place.

13 thoughts on “BACKUP LOG cannot be performed because there is no current database backup

  1. Hi sir,
    i have taken the full backup but still i can not take log backups and give the above error. previously it was working .

    1. wahid greetings
      After changing the backup to FULL, it is necessary to perform a full backup of the database first, then try again to perform Backup Log

  2. You can also see this error if you’re running COPY_ONLY on the FULL. We recently stopped using a 3rd-party tool to do our FULL backups. Unknown to us, that tool had an issue with a pair of our DBs, and the log chains to it were corrupted.

    Try removing the COPY-ONLY to get a fresh log chain started. (We’re actually glad this happened because we didn’t realize our other DBs were still referencing the 3rd party tool!)

  3. Had someone have this error when installing SQL and trying to restore from a .bak file, they received this error. They had just installed a new VM and SQL , however the new VM was not on the domain. They put the new VM on the domain first, then re-installed SQL and restored from a .bak file and the error message was resolved. Food for thought.

  4. We are getting a similar error from a SQL Server Maintenance Plan (SQL Server 2016 Standard)

    Executing the query “BACKUP LOG [databasename] TO DISK = N’\\server…” failed with the following error: “BACKUP LOG cannot be performed because there is no current database backup.
    BACKUP LOG is terminating abnormally.”. Possible failure reasons: Problems with the query, “ResultSet” property not set correctly, parameters not set correctly, or connection not established correctly.

    I haven’t been able to resolve this yet.

  5. Thanks Boss. I had the same issue. my db had never been backed up. just did it, and afterwards, I restored. everything went smoothly.

    Much appreciated

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