Is it safe to shrink data file?

Question

This is true that shrinking a database is not recommended. You can understand it like this when you shrink the database then it leads to increase in fragmentation now to reduce the fragmentation you try to rebuilt the index which will eventually lead to increase in your database size. 30 мая 2015 г.

Why you should not shrink your data files?

Shrinking of data files should be performed even more rarely, if at all. Here's why: data file shrink can cause *massive* index fragmentation (of the out-of-order pages kind, not the wasted-space kind) and it is very expensive (in terms of I/O, locking, transaction log generation).

Is it safe to shrink SQL database?

Many SQL Server experts advise against SQL Server database shrinking, especially as a frequent and pre-scheduled maintenance action.

What happens when you shrink a database?

Shrinking data files recovers space by moving pages of data from the end of the file to unoccupied space closer to the front of the file. When enough free space is created at the end of the file, data pages at end of the file can be deallocated and returned to the file system.

Is it recommended to shrink data file in SQL Server?

Recommendations. Data that is moved to shrink a file can be scattered to any available location in the file. This causes index fragmentation and can slow the performance of queries that search a range of the index. To eliminate the fragmentation, consider rebuilding the indexes on the file after shrinking.

Expert · Answer