92% free space - will shrink result in faster backup/restore

  • Guys,

    I have a new production database to deploy; It is an extract of a little bit of data from an existing database and was created by restoring the original, truncating some of the tables and then copying the required data back in from the source database.

    Currently the source database takes about 5 hours to restore. The new database is NEVER going to get to the size of the original (well maybe in 15 years or so..). Can I make the backup/restore faster by shrinking the database first.

    I don't want a tirade of don't shrink the database responses 🙂 these are very specific circumstances: I need to be able to restore quickly if one of the migration stages goes belly up - I don't want to be waiting 5 hours to backup and then 5 hours to restore.

  • Shrinking the database in this case is ok: you need it, do it.

    Backups do not copy empty pages, so the backup process itself will not be any faster.

    If you need faster backups/restores you have some options:

    * compress it (works also in standard edition)

    * use a different backup strategy (filegroup backups for instance)

    -- Gianluca Sartori

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