Database won’t start because of missing datafile

Posted on April 4, 2009 by Mark Nelson

I had a situation today where my database would not start because “someone” had deleted a datafile. While deleting the datafile at the OS level was probably not a particularly good decision, things like this do happen occasionally, so how to get the database back up?

Here is the error message when the database refused to start:

ORA-01157: cannot identify/lock data file 14 - see DBWR trace file
ORA-01110: data file 14: 'C:\DATABASE\ORADATA\ORCL\CDBWKLW.DBF'

This command is the quickest and easiest way to get rid of the problem:

alter database datafile 'c:\database\oradata\orcl\cdbwklw.dbf' offline drop ;

After this the database will start happily. You may need to drop the tablespace too.

About Mark Nelson

Mark Nelson is a Consulting Solution Architect in the Fusion Middleware Architects Team (known as ”The A-Team”) in Oracle Development. Their mission is to supply deep technical expertise to support customers deploying Oracle Fusion Middleware, and to collect real world feedback to continuously improve the product set. Mark spends most of his time working on development lifecycle, SOA and BPM. Before joining Oracle Development in 2010, Mark worked in Sales Consulting at Oracle since 2006 and various roles at IBM since 1994, including several in Software Group and System/390 Group across Asia Pacific.

View all posts by Mark Nelson →

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