How about mgrating data? Create an empty DB, then use the migration wizard to migrate the lot from the old DB to the new DB?

I've seen SQL with sparse files, although how they became sparse I have no idea. The Customer was using a development database and I think he just blew it away...

Paul:

I much appreciate you input to this thread as you experience is very widely recognized. However, I am definitely not imagining it, I have seen an mdf tagged as sparse....

No, this is definitely not happening, because I have to stop mssql to run fsutil, so nothing is accessing the file, but it is still set to sparse.

I've seen this in BOL too, but at no point does it suggest that it...

I have definitely seen mdf's as sparse files, determined as such by using fsutil.

One of the earlier posts led me to http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/kimberly/2007/03/04/InstantInitializationWhatWhyAndHow.aspx

which mentions this feature. The comment "file...

Actually, I'm trying to find out why, on rare occasions, mdf and ldf files are created as sparse. If I query using:

fsutil sparse queryflag

most of the time I get the...

Rich:

Turned out to be ISA server (now how often do you hear that?). I had seen another article provoking the same problem, but I couldn't see anything being blocked by...

I have had SQL on both servers previously, but I uninstalled them both, configured the cluster, then reinstalled as a cluster. Node1 went on fine, but node2 didn't install, with...

Update: Yep, works fine. Must have done something right for a change. Thanks

Thanks! I'm at another customer now, but I'll try ASAP.