I have several databases in the 400GB range and the server is getting low on space. Im not an actual DBA but im the last resort.
Im trying to buy some time with the current hardware and i was hoping i could compress/shrink the database to do so. When i look up shrinkdb, every thing says its horrible and dont do it.
Is there an effective way to compress or otherwise make the database primary/secondary file sizes smaller?
Which SQL Server edition and version you are using. In case you are using SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition you can enable backup compression which will give back some free disk space for your databases to grow further
Once you've established the free space and also feel confident that INSERTS won't occur soon that require the space, consider doing a on-off shrink. Before you try that step - consider doing some housekeeping on the server? Are there any other large files taking up space , on the same drives as where the data files are hosted? Can you move anything around? Even within the database itself , are there tmp tables which could be dropped etc. ?
How to decrease database file size
Posted - 09/18/2012 : 15:41:46
