I am having a small issue when it comes to backing up the transaction log for our database. The db is set to bulk-logged and I am aware that the backup file size for the log will be larger than the actual size due to the extents needed for a recovery. When I created a job to set the database to full, then run the backup job for the transaction log, the same result happened. This occurs late at night, so I rescheduled the jobs to happen this morning so I could watch them. To my surprise the backup went off great and the backup file was the correct size (ie smaller than the actual size). Why would there be a difference in the outcome when the job goes off as scheduled (with no one watching) vs. the results of myself watching the results?

ps I did not manually run the jobs. I reschuled them and let the jobs fire off as usuall.

Thanks in advance
Kelly Preston