Actual Size of my database?

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Actual Size of my database?

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Mitesh Chauhan

Posted Wednesday, October 24, 2012 4:40 AM

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Last Login: Friday, April 26, 2013 12:02 PM
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Guys
I am not a DBA but a developer so please bear with me.

The size of my db is 10929.50 MB (10GB), but when I took the backup and compressed it, the size of file was reduced to about 3.5GB.

I detached the db and zipped (.mdf + .ldf) using 7zip and the size of zip file was also around 3.5 GB.

I am wondering why is that and why my db size is showing 10GB. Is my db inflated?
By the way Recovery model is set to Simple.

I would really appreciate if someone can shed some light on this.

Regards

Mitesh

Post #1376404

Adi Cohn-120898

Posted Wednesday, October 24, 2012 4:55 AM

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When you compress the database, the compressed files should be smaller then the original files. It has nothing to do with how full the database is. This is what compression does. If you want to check how much space is used in the database, you can use sp_spaceused procedure.

Adi

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Post #1376407

Grant Fritchey

Posted Wednesday, October 24, 2012 6:31 AM

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The database size is allocated size, not data size. SQL Server, by design, maintains empty space within the data and log files in order to allow for growth of your database without having to go to the disk to allocate more space. It's normal. You'll regularly see the backup size different than the storage size. You can get a quick idea about the allocated size, used size and unallocated amounts by querying sys.dm_db_file_space_usage.

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