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Breaking A Database Into Smaller Files

Published 2017-08-09 by Kevin Feasel

Jana Sattainathan shows how to break a SQL Server database into smaller files, as well as giving some reasons why you might want to do that:

You are probably reading this post because you have experienced the pain yourself and I dont want to waste anymore of your time and get right to the steps involved in breaking up a huge database or a datafile

  1. Check the space situation on your host

  2. Get the space usage by files for the big database/datafile in question

  3. Decide on number of files to add/location

  4. Add multiple secondary datafiles

  5. Distribute data from big datafile into the new datafiles using EMPTYFILE option

  6. Shrink the big datafile and set a maximum size

  7. Change the default filegroup

Read on for Jana’s step-by-step approach.

Published in Administration