Also, we're talking about potentially replicating up to 50,000 tables. Don't ask, it's a long and painful story that I'm still peeved about.

I was thinking of log-shipping too but I don't like doing log-shipping with standby. I might go to the requestors and ask if I can change the synchronization timeframe to...

Depends on the queries that are running, jobs, etc. Sometimes it quick, sometimes it takes a long time.

Can you also check and see the location of your TempDB? What drive is it on, what's the configuration of that drive?

Nothing popped up when I ran that. Does that mean I shouldn't upgrade compatability?

4096 MB is the max size that you can have for a database using SQL Server Express. The database you are attaching is larger than that which is why you're...

Can you post the error? I can't see the image.

I can't see your screenshots but try this

[SERVERNAME]\[INSTANCE NAME]

For Example, if your server name is SQLSERVER1 and your instance name is SQLEXPRESS,

connect to SQLSERVER1\SQLEXPRESS

Also, make sure the sql server service...

Since he has 400 million rows, should this be done with one statement or should this be done in batches? Moving hundreds of millions of records is probably going to...

Try logging into the production sql server from the dev box using that service account.

Wait, so you can't log into the server too? Did you try to ping it from the dev server?

Did you make sure to include the domain. So instead of say...

Log onto the DEV Server. Try to ping the Production server. Do you get a response?

Does the server allow remote connections?

SELECT *

FROM sys.configurations

WHERE NAME = 'remote access'

Is the value field set to 0 or 1?

The only way I've been able to do this before is to delete in batches. The problem is, this is a slow process. I had to do with for multiple...

As the others have said, there's not really a great way to determine this off the bat. Make sure you create decent size "initial size" for the files. Make sure...