Unused Space vs Unallocated Space

• Clint-525719

  SSCrazy

  Points: 2924

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  June 18, 2009 at 9:13 am

  #384799

  To my knowledge, unallocated space is storage that has been allocated to the database, but not yet to a specific object. Unused space is reserved for existing tables(indexes too?) to grow in. I've read a few articles, and managed to confuse myself, so here is my question:

  When an autogrow happens, does it create unused space, or unallocated space?

  We do index defragmentation every night via a "Reorganize index" maintenance plan, but our DB has about 17 MB of unused space and 17 GB of unallocated space. I'm trying to determine if we need all this unallocated space, because I'm evaluating our autogrowth, which brings me to one more question:

  When I right click the DB in SSMS, and choose 'Reports > Standard Reports > Disk Usage', the report it generates says "No entry found for autogrow/autoshrink event for [DBName] in the trace log". I know it has grown at some point, because all the files are larger than the initial size. Anybody else ever seen this? Any other way to check for autogrowth stats?

  Thanks all!