Let me initially point out that this isn't related to the physical footprint of the log file on the drive.
I have an ETL database in simple recovery mode that doesn't appear to mark pages as 'unused' and I dont understand why
I was under the impression that the engine flagged space as 'available/unused' as transactions are committed/rolled back in simple recovery mode.
I have no running trans in the db, in fact it's completely idle with no user connections. But the log file is 6gigs with 15% free. Why? What invisible running trans could there be that have taken up 5ish gigs