Reducing the database size. Physical MDF/NDF files

kaybee

Hi, I'm trying to reduce the size of the database files to help speed the backup process up. It's at about 128GB at the moment but I know that we have files attached as BLOBS in the database totalling up to about 60GB. I'm going through this table and clearing the BLOBs and storing them externally from the database on a file server. Will this release the space and reduce the file size?

KYDutchie

Hi,

Not automatically, you can reduce the size of the database files, but be very careful with that.
If you shrink them too much, you will get performance issues. I personally like to keep about 20-25% of free space in my datafiles. I also have not set my datafiles to autogrow/shrink. It is the task of the DB admin to keep an eye on this.

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Willy

kaybee

Hi, where do I see this? Under database information, I see:

Database Used (KB) 128020032 97%
Database Size (KB) 132264128

bbrown

Is a difference of 60 GB going to make all that much difference in backup time? Besides, what are you going to do when that 60 GB gets filled back in by data? If backup duration is such a problem with this small of a database, look at improving systems.