Hi,

I've often wondered about OS-Level defraging my data disks of my SQL Server
2005 server. Is it recommended, is there anything I should be looking out
for? How often should it be done? Things like that.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance,
Linn

Linn Kubler (lkubler (AT) chartwellwisc2 (DOT) com) writes:
Hopefully: almost never.

But that presumes that you grow data files in a planned and order manner.
If you just say "CREATE DATABASE mydatabase" and then never make any
adjustments, your database will grow in small small steps, and this
can lead to considerable disk fragmentation.

But if you create your databases with good sizes from the beginning,
and grow them in an ordered fashion in maintenance windows, there
should not be much fragmentation.


--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel (AT) sommarskog (DOT) se

Links for SQL Server Books Online:
SQL 2008: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/cc514207.aspx
SQL 2005: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/bb895970.aspx
SQL 2000: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinf...ons/books.mspx