Question

I have a very large database (40 gig) and have run the procedure

sp_space_used 

and found that there is 10 gig of unallocated space. Obviously this is a lot and the .mdf file is taking up most of the disk. I have looked into running

DBCC SHRINKDATABASE (db, TRUNCATEONLY);

Do I also need to shrink the transaction log or will shrinkdatabase take care of this? What are the negative implications of running this procedure? Can I run this while the database is in use? I’ve tried running the shrinkdatabase command but still have lots of unallocated space.

database_size   unallocated space
49575.06 MB   8393.49 MB

reserved       data        index_size   unused
42170328 KB 22704672 KB 19099160 KB  366496 KB

NOTE: the database has a simple recovery model so I’m guessing I don’t need to backup the log at all.

What is the difference between running

DBCC SHRINKFILE (datafile, TRUNCATEONLY)

to

DBCC SHRINKDATABSE (db, TRUNCATEONLY)?

Answer 1

I ended up using DBCC SHRINKDATABASE (db, %); specifying a target percentage which seemed to solve my problem.