It's been almost two weeks since my last post as we've been offline in Scotland (another photo post to follow - I owe you two now...) but now we're back for the crazy Fall conference and teaching season.

The latest installment of my regular Q&A column in TechNet Magazine is available at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc895648.aspx. This month I cover the following topics:

• How backups and restores work and why the times for each may differ
• The difference between log shipping and database mirroring around BULK_LOGGED operations
• How other factors apart from log backups can contribute to excessively large transaction logs
• Why database repair exists and why it shouldn't be used
• Tracking index usage with sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats

Enjoy!