•Avoid running DBCC CHECKDB at a time when other / major data modifications are taking place.

•Divide the database into a multiple files. The limitations are per sparse file and each database snapshot creates matching sparse files for each data file.

•Find out which tables/indexes result in the most write activity during the lifetime of the snapshot

oSeparate them out into a different file group with multiple files of comparatively smaller sizes.

oIdentify & revise the Index Fill Factor & PAD index values.

oUse check table or as appropriate on those.

•Format NTFS partitions with /L (Windows versions before 2012 will require this HF 967351) for large volumes for SQL 2012 & below. With SQL Server 2014 there’s this option to move to REFS but not recommended for now.

oIf the disk can’t be reformatted with /L, add another disk that’s formatted with /L and having “Bytes Per FileRecord Segment” at 4 KB, create a snapshot there & run DBCC on the specific snapshot.