It would help us if you could give us some idea of what you're upgrading from and too, and also the size of the DB would be beneficial.

Can you pad...

good questions.

The query optimizer relies on the statistics to decide whether to choose an index or not, if the statistics are missing then it won't use an index and will...

From the sounds of things it looks like auto create stats is turned off for the DB.

You can re-enable it with the following script

EXEC sp_dboption '<yourDB>', auto create statistics', 'TRUE'

Thanks anyway, I found it.

That'll teach me to actually look for an answer first rather than just ask

Couldn't you set up performance monitor to capture the data to a log file every 15 seconds?

I can't remember whether this was available on NT 4 so maybe it's not...

Cheers Noel, but seeing as you've got John on the case I'll bow out entirely.

What he doesn't know about full text indexing isn't worth knowing

Great advice for everyone new (and sometimes old), stop using cursors unless they're absolutely necessary (I've written 3 in the last 6 years and that's too many).

A set based approach...

depends on what type of SAN and whether you have 1:1 mapping between the disks and the luns.

Definately cynical, and there's nothing wrong with that at all (it's right up towards the top of the dba traits list, along with paranoid, suspicious and loads of others) 

Hi Noel,

Can I ask whar's in the columns that you're full text indexing? text, blob, etc 

We're currently looking at a Dell AX100 for our QA environment with 1.5 TB of storage and that's comming in below your budget.

Whilst it might not meet your needs it...

I agree with Andrew, the maintenance plan option is probably going to be your best bet, although I'm assuming that you only want 5 backups (instead of the 6) so that...

1. nope, everything was in the one database

2. int based

3. Clustered PK's

Also, the DB in question is >TB so I hope that meets your large requirement too.

Hope this helps

You're welcome, that's what this forum is for

yes, datepart is a function available in SQL2000, have a look in BOL for date and time functions for a breakdown of what it does