• One other caveat I thought of with either solution, is that if the column will end up being mandatory aka Not Null, there will need to be a check at the end to ensure that there are no null rows that were added after the fact.  Also unless you can guarantee that the code will provide a value a default is almost always needed.

    For the question on using a default when adding the table, I would first crank up the size of the log file by a few GB, and I expect it would possibly be shorter than the 35 minutes, but it only helps if you have the same value to insert or a derivable formula.

    Enjoy, Brian