thanks all. really appreciate the help.

Bill

thanks - i've already broken up the deletes. will simple mode speed up the deletes?

they are being done using the primary clustered index.

approx. 15% is to be deleted from a VLDB. unfortunately it would be way too much data

to copy into a temp table.

i can't truncate since some rows need to remain.

was under the impression that simple recovery mode just had to do with the backups of

the trans log. just looking...