I see this topic come up over and over again on the web. Somebody’s transaction logs run wild and they start searching for how to disable the transaction log so they can maximize disk space. I suspect that the people searching for this are probably developers or sys admins that got stuck babysitting a SQL Server and might not have had a chance to get familiar with SQL.
You cannot disable SQL Server transaction logs any more than you can disable the transmission in your car. SQL operations that change the state of the database are processed in transactions and all transactions are written to the transaction log before they are written to the data file. Here is how Microsoft puts it:
Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000, like many relational databases, uses a write-ahead log. A write-ahead log ensures that no data modifications are written to disk before the associated log record.
SQL Server maintains a buffer cache into which it reads data pages when data must be retrieved. Data modifications are not made directly to disk, but are instead made to the copy of the page in the buffer cache. The modification is not written to disk until either the database is checkpointed, or the modifications must be written to disk so the buffer can be used to hold a new page. Writing a modified data page from the buffer cache to disk is called flushing the page. A page modified in the cache but not yet written to disk is called a dirty page.
At the time a modification is made to a page in the buffer, a log record is built in the log cache recording the modification. This log record must be written to disk before the associated dirty page is flushed from the buffer cache to disk. If the dirty page were flushed before the log record, it would create a modification on disk that could not be rolled back if the server failed before the log record were written to disk. SQL Server has logic that prevents a dirty page from being flushed before the associated log record. Because log records are always written ahead of the associated data pages, the log is called a write-ahead log. (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa174527(SQL.80).aspx)
The transaction log isn’t going anywhere, the real question is: how do you manage transaction logs?
To learn more about how to manage transaction logs, check out the excellent article: Managing Transaction Logs by Microsoft MVP Gail Shaw.