reclaim "unused space" from a table?

We have a table that is showing a large amount of "reserved" space:
Rows: 4095513
Reserved 11255328 KB
Data: 1176296 KB
Index_size: 531240 KB
unused: 9547792 KB
(found wiht sp_spaceused)
We have only simple types in this table... no ntext or blobs or
anything.
Just int, smalldatetime, varchar(50) etc. (only 10 fields)
So our data and indices come to about 1.6 GB, but "unused" space is 9.1
GB.
We are running out of drive space...why would it reserve so much space
for this table?"cmay" <cmay@.walshgroup.com> wrote in message
news:1139343553.343130.288690@.g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> We have a table that is showing a large amount of "reserved" space:
> Rows: 4095513
> Reserved 11255328 KB
> Data: 1176296 KB
> Index_size: 531240 KB
> unused: 9547792 KB
> (found wiht sp_spaceused)
> We have only simple types in this table... no ntext or blobs or
> anything.
> Just int, smalldatetime, varchar(50) etc. (only 10 fields)
> So our data and indices come to about 1.6 GB, but "unused" space is 9.1
> GB.
> We are running out of drive space...why would it reserve so much space
> for this table?
>
What did you specify when you created the database? Take a look at DBCC
SHRINKFILE.
Rick Sawtell
MCT, MCSD, MCDBA|||Rick,
The DB was created like 10 years ago, so I have no idea what happened
back then.
The DB is set to auto grow by 10%. From what I have read shrinking the
DB won't solve this problem. The DB is 15 GB with just about all of it
being considered "used" (I could get back a couple hundred MB by
shrinking the DB), but the 9GB of space being eaten up by this one
table is what is really painful.
I tried running DBCC CleanTable but that didn't help either.
I'm going to try to insert all the data into a new table and then drop
the old one, but that isn't really ideal.
If there are any other things I can try I would love to give it a go.|||Can you try rebuilding the clustered index? That will automatically move all
the data to new space.
--
HTH
Kalen Delaney, SQL Server MVP
www.solidqualitylearning.com
"cmay" <cmay@.walshgroup.com> wrote in message
news:1139354564.333651.258690@.g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Rick,
> The DB was created like 10 years ago, so I have no idea what happened
> back then.
> The DB is set to auto grow by 10%. From what I have read shrinking the
> DB won't solve this problem. The DB is 15 GB with just about all of it
> being considered "used" (I could get back a couple hundred MB by
> shrinking the DB), but the 9GB of space being eaten up by this one
> table is what is really painful.
> I tried running DBCC CleanTable but that didn't help either.
> I'm going to try to insert all the data into a new table and then drop
> the old one, but that isn't really ideal.
> If there are any other things I can try I would love to give it a go.
>|||We actually didn't have a clustered index on this table.
I ended up running an insert from the offending table to a new table,
then dropped the old one, and the new one looks great.|||In general all tables should have a clustered index. You have no way to
control fragmentation or issues like this without one.
--
Andrew J. Kelly SQL MVP
"cmay" <cmay@.walshgroup.com> wrote in message
news:1140532518.546041.33250@.z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> We actually didn't have a clustered index on this table.
> I ended up running an insert from the offending table to a new table,
> then dropped the old one, and the new one looks great.
>