• To re-enable a disabled index, you have to rebuild it using ALTER INDEX REBUILD etc, or just drop it completely (DROP INDEX tablename.indexname)

    The reason for needing to rebuild it is because while it's disabled, the engine doesn't use it at all, so there are no data updates to it. Really the only reason to disable an index at all is so you can keep the schema in tact, and recreate it easily later if needed.