Question

How do I shrink my sharepoint databases? The log file has grown to be over 8 GB, though the actual data file is less than one.

Answer 1

I suspect you mean you want to shrink the log file, not the database itself (there’s no point in shrinking that unless you have deleted tons of content).

In short, you want to run the following commands in SQL Manager or SQL Server Management Studio or the osql or sqlcmd tools (as appropriate to whichever version of the database you are running), as described here:

USE WSS_Content
GO
DBCC SHRINKFILE(WSS_Content_log, 2)
BACKUP LOG WSS_Content WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY
DBCC SHRINKFILE(WSS_Content_log, 2)
GO

This page has a bunch more tips on preventing the log file from growing so big. The easiest one is to set the database recovery model to “Simple”.