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shrink and then rebuild or vice versa
Hi, i need to do a shrink process a one time off, in order to release 120GB which i truncated. What is better to do: first shrink and then rebuild indexes or first rebuild indexes and then shrink (second option will give me more free sapce after shrink but messes the indexes again) thanks
Before you go ahead ask yourself (1) do you need to 120GB back and (2) will you need that space in the next 6-12 months? If any of these are true, then I personally would not perform the shrink. However, to answer your question: The Shrink operation can be the cause of fragmentation therefore you will need to perform the index maintenance AFTER. In his [blog post][1] Paul advises to REORGANIZE instead of rebuilding the whole index to reduce the amount of space needed during the maintenance. [1]:
http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/why-you-should-not-shrink-your-data-files/
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