Bill Talada (10/13/2015)
You have two problems:1. Lack of disk space.
2. Incorrect constraint on a column (wrong datatype).
With compression you can solve #1 and turn a blind eye to #2.
Likely your space problem during conversion was because of having recovery set to FULL instead of SIMPLE during the process.
Personally I would rename the old table, move 10% of the rows into the new table, and repeat until done. That will get you through the tight disk space period.
1. That was just my test env and I deleted an old database as soon as I got the warning but perhaps not soon enough to allow the test to continue properly though it did continue for probably 10-15 minutes before it told me it failed so not sure what happened. I can see now where the temp table approach is better anyway so will be experimenting with that instead of the copy/rename column approach. I'll make sure we have enough disk space next time.
Thx and that's a great suggestion to change to Simple during conversion then back to Full.