最大的区别是truncate是不记录日志的操作，而delete是。

简单地说，这意味着在数据库崩溃的情况下，不能通过截断恢复所操作的数据，但可以通过删除恢复。

详情请点击这里

DELETE语句:该命令只根据where子句中给定的条件从表中删除行，如果没有指定条件，则从表中删除所有行。但是它不会释放包含表的空间。

SQL DELETE语句的语法是:

DELETE FROM table_name [WHERE condition];

TRUNCATE语句:该命令用于删除表中的所有行，并释放包含表的空间。

都是很好的答案，我必须补充一句:

由于TRUNCATE TABLE是一个DDL(数据定义语言)命令，而不是DML(数据操作语言)命令，删除触发器不会运行。

DELETE The DELETE command is used to remove rows from a table. A WHERE clause can be used to only remove some rows. If no WHERE condition is specified, all rows will be removed. After performing a DELETE operation you need to COMMIT or ROLLBACK the transaction to make the change permanent or to undo it. Note that this operation will cause all DELETE triggers on the table to fire. TRUNCATE TRUNCATE removes all rows from a table. The operation cannot be rolled back and no triggers will be fired. As such, TRUCATE is faster and doesn't use as much undo space as a DELETE. DROP The DROP command removes a table from the database. All the tables' rows, indexes and privileges will also be removed. No DML triggers will be fired. The operation cannot be rolled back. DROP and TRUNCATE are DDL commands, whereas DELETE is a DML command. Therefore DELETE operations can be rolled back (undone), while DROP and TRUNCATE operations cannot be rolled back.

来自:http://www.orafaq.com/faq/difference_between_truncate_delete_and_drop_commands

Truncate and Delete in SQL are two commands which is used to remove or delete data from table. Though quite basic in nature both Sql commands can create lot of trouble until you are familiar with details before using it. An Incorrect choice of command can result is either very slow process or can even blew up log segment, if too much data needs to be removed and log segment is not enough. That's why it's critical to know when to use truncate and delete command in SQL but before using these you should be aware of the Differences between Truncate and Delete, and based upon them, we should be able to find out when DELETE is better option for removing data or TRUNCATE should be used to purge tables.

参考资料请点击这里

如果不小心使用Delete/Truncate从表中删除了所有数据。您可以回滚已提交的事务。恢复上次备份并运行事务日志，直到将要执行删除/截断操作。

以下相关信息来自一篇博客文章:

While working on database, we are using Delete and Truncate without knowing the differences between them. In this article we will discuss the difference between Delete and Truncate in Sql. Delete: Delete is a DML command. Delete statement is executed using a row lock,each row in the table is locked for deletion. We can specify filters in where clause. It deletes specified data if where condition exists. Delete activities a trigger because the operation are logged individually. Slower than Truncate because it Keeps logs Truncate Truncate is a DDL command. Truncate table always lock the table and page but not each row.As it removes all the data. Cannot use Where condition. It Removes all the data. Truncate table cannot activate a trigger because the operation does not log individual row deletions. Faster in performance wise, because it doesn't keep any logs. Note: Delete and Truncate both can be rolled back when used with Transaction. If Transaction is done, means committed then we can not rollback Truncate command, but we can still rollback Delete command from Log files, as delete write records them in Log file in case it is needed to rollback in future from log files. If you have a Foreign key constraint referring to the table you are trying to truncate, this won't work even if the referring table has no data in it. This is because the foreign key checking is done with DDL rather than DML. This can be got around by temporarily disabling the foreign key constraint(s) to the table. Delete table is a logged operation. So the deletion of each row gets logged in the transaction log, which makes it slow. Truncate table also deletes all the rows in a table, but it won't log the deletion of each row instead it logs the deallocation of the data pages of the table, which makes it faster. ~ If accidentally you removed all the data from table using Delete/Truncate. You can rollback committed transaction. Restore the last backup and run transaction log till the time when Delete/Truncate is about to happen.