• Drop does exactly what it says. It's going to drop the existing index and then rebuild it. No, it won't leave the existing index available while it does the rebuild... unless you're also doing ONLINE operations with the index. Then the other index will stay in place while the create operation occurs. This will take extra tempdb space, so be ready for that.

    "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
    - Theodore Roosevelt

    Author of:
    SQL Server Execution Plans
    SQL Server Query Performance Tuning