title: Is it harmful to set recovery to SIMPLE and then back to FULL?
body: <p>I have a massive transaction that touches upwards of 2 million records and produces upwards of 4 million. For purposes of rolling back on failure, I am hesitant to split this into multiple transactions. However, on testing this transaction, I encountered a 'log_backup' error.</p>
  
  <p>After doing some research, this appeared to be related to using a 'FULL' recovery model, and that I can set this to 'SIMPLE' with a simple command. I placed the following message at the beginning of my transaction:</p>
  
  <p><code>ALTER DATABASE &lt;Name&gt; SET RECOVERY SIMPLE;</code></p>
  
  <p>At the end of the transaction, I reversed this with:</p>
  
  <p><code>ALTER DATABASE &lt;Name&gt; SET RECOVERY FULL;</code></p>
  
  <p>A couple of questions:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Is this sound practice?</li>
  <li>Would this prevent recovery to a state prior to this transaction?</li>
  <li>Is there a better way to prevent 'log_backup' for a transaction of this size?</li>
  </ul>