• It's normal IF the indexing on the data was not optimal, so that you were scanning old data before that has now been removed.

    Note that when you DELETE a large number of rows SQL defers the actual release of the data pages until later. A batch process later removes these "ghost" rows in increments. For 1TB data, I guess it's possible that it took more than 2 days to completely DELETE the ghost rows.

    You should rebuild the affected tables after that large a DELETE.

    You should also review index statistics, including missing indexes and current index usage and table scan counts, to verify whether you need to re-index one or more of the tables.

    SQL DBA,SQL Server MVP(07, 08, 09) A socialist is someone who will give you the shirt off *someone else's* back.