SQL Batched Delete

Question

I have a table in SQL Server 2005 which has approx 4 billion rows in it. I need to delete approximately 2 billion of these rows. If I try and do it in a single transaction, th

Answer 1

Sounds like this is one-off operation (I hope for you) and you don't need to go back to a state that's halfway this batched delete - if that's the case why don't you just switch to SIMPLE transaction mode before running and then back to FULL when you're done?

This way the transaction log won't grow as much. This might not be ideal in most situations but I don't see anything wrong here (assuming as above you don't need to go back to a state that's in between your deletes).

you can do this in your script with smt like:

ALTER DATABASE myDB SET RECOVERY FULL/SIMPLE

Alternatively you can setup a job to shrink the transaction log every given interval of time - while your delete is running. This is kinda bad but I reckon it'd do the trick.