Hmmm...true. 🙂 Ran it very quickly on my box as well.

I discovered one more way to create a big table a day or so after submitting my script. Create your table with one dummy_column as default null (or default getdate()) and the rest default newid() columns.

Insert 1 row into the table with default values then loop it as so:

insert bigtable default values

set @ctr = 0

set @num_iterations = 18 -- this is a DOUBLING number, so anything past 18 and you're getting into slow territory.

while @ctr < @num_iterations

begin

insert into bigtable(dummy_column)

select dummy_column from bigtable

set @ctr = @ctr + 1

end

Dummy_column can be anything, including null, as long as the other columns have default newid() set. This is also pretty quick way to create a large table.