How to release Table unused space

Hi all
I am having some disk space issue, and I notice that I have some tables with
a lot of GB of unused space.
Is it a way to claim and release that unused space?
To give you a better picture, I have just one table with below information
Rows = 131977895
Reserved =146270344 KB
Index_Size = 2767616 KB
Data = 70372568 KB
Unused = 73130160 KB <-- here is my concernd almost 70 GB unused !!!
This table is reindexed every sunday (yesterday was the last reindex) and it
does not look to have fragmentation issues, when I ran a DBCC Showcontig I
get these results:
DBCC SHOWCONTIG scanning 'Sales' table...
Table: 'Sales' (1228791685); index ID: 1, database ID: 16
TABLE level scan performed.
- Pages Scanned........................: 8796978
- Extents Scanned.......................: 1101956
- Extent Switches.......................: 1101956
- Avg. Pages per Extent..................: 8.0
- Scan Density [Best Count:Actual Count]......: 99.79% [1099623:110
1957]
- Logical Scan Fragmentation ..............: 0.04%
- Extent Scan Fragmentation ...............: 9.80%
- Avg. Bytes Free per Page................: 647.0
- Avg. Page Density (full)................: 92.01%
DBCC execution completed. If DBCC printed error messages, contact your
system administrator.
Could someone give me an idea on how to release the 70 GB of unused space?
Thanks a lot
JuanDo you have Text or image columns? Did you drop any recently?
Andrew J. Kelly SQL MVP
"Juan" <Juan@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:A6F92E41-49D3-4D64-9123-63FE8740E18E@.microsoft.com...
> Hi all
> I am having some disk space issue, and I notice that I have some tables
> with
> a lot of GB of unused space.
> Is it a way to claim and release that unused space?
> To give you a better picture, I have just one table with below information
> Rows = 131977895
> Reserved =146270344 KB
> Index_Size = 2767616 KB
> Data = 70372568 KB
> Unused = 73130160 KB <-- here is my concernd almost 70 GB unused !!!
>
> This table is reindexed every sunday (yesterday was the last reindex) and
> it
> does not look to have fragmentation issues, when I ran a DBCC Showcontig I
> get these results:
> DBCC SHOWCONTIG scanning 'Sales' table...
> Table: 'Sales' (1228791685); index ID: 1, database ID: 16
> TABLE level scan performed.
> - Pages Scanned........................: 8796978
> - Extents Scanned.......................: 1101956
> - Extent Switches.......................: 1101956
> - Avg. Pages per Extent..................: 8.0
> - Scan Density [Best Count:Actual Count]......: 99.79% [1099623:1
101957]
> - Logical Scan Fragmentation ..............: 0.04%
> - Extent Scan Fragmentation ...............: 9.80%
> - Avg. Bytes Free per Page................: 647.0
> - Avg. Page Density (full)................: 92.01%
> DBCC execution completed. If DBCC printed error messages, contact your
> system administrator.
>
> Could someone give me an idea on how to release the 70 GB of unused space?
> Thanks a lot
> Juan
>|||Juan,
Your numbers don't match.
The first data you mention is 132 million rows, and 50% unused space.
But then the DBCC SHOWCONTIG output reports 1,228 millions rows and 10%
unused space.
Gert-Jan
Juan wrote:
> Hi all
> I am having some disk space issue, and I notice that I have some tables wi
th
> a lot of GB of unused space.
> Is it a way to claim and release that unused space?
> To give you a better picture, I have just one table with below information
> Rows = 131977895
> Reserved =146270344 KB
> Index_Size = 2767616 KB
> Data = 70372568 KB
> Unused = 73130160 KB <-- here is my concernd almost 70 GB unused !!!
> This table is reindexed every sunday (yesterday was the last reindex) and
it
> does not look to have fragmentation issues, when I ran a DBCC Showcontig I
> get these results:
> DBCC SHOWCONTIG scanning 'Sales' table...
> Table: 'Sales' (1228791685); index ID: 1, database ID: 16
> TABLE level scan performed.
> - Pages Scanned........................: 8796978
> - Extents Scanned.......................: 1101956
> - Extent Switches.......................: 1101956
> - Avg. Pages per Extent..................: 8.0
> - Scan Density [Best Count:Actual Count]......: 99.79% [1099623:1
101957]
> - Logical Scan Fragmentation ..............: 0.04%
> - Extent Scan Fragmentation ...............: 9.80%
> - Avg. Bytes Free per Page................: 647.0
> - Avg. Page Density (full)................: 92.01%
> DBCC execution completed. If DBCC printed error messages, contact your
> system administrator.
> Could someone give me an idea on how to release the 70 GB of unused space?
> Thanks a lot
> Juan|||Did you get your numbers below from sp_spaceused? You cannot rely on this
for accurate information. DBCC updateusage will help.
Note that from showcontig output your pages are mostly full --> not much
unused space.
TheSQLGuru
President
Indicium Resources, Inc.
"Juan" <Juan@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:A6F92E41-49D3-4D64-9123-63FE8740E18E@.microsoft.com...
> Hi all
> I am having some disk space issue, and I notice that I have some tables
> with
> a lot of GB of unused space.
> Is it a way to claim and release that unused space?
> To give you a better picture, I have just one table with below information
> Rows = 131977895
> Reserved =146270344 KB
> Index_Size = 2767616 KB
> Data = 70372568 KB
> Unused = 73130160 KB <-- here is my concernd almost 70 GB unused !!!
>
> This table is reindexed every sunday (yesterday was the last reindex) and
> it
> does not look to have fragmentation issues, when I ran a DBCC Showcontig I
> get these results:
> DBCC SHOWCONTIG scanning 'Sales' table...
> Table: 'Sales' (1228791685); index ID: 1, database ID: 16
> TABLE level scan performed.
> - Pages Scanned........................: 8796978
> - Extents Scanned.......................: 1101956
> - Extent Switches.......................: 1101956
> - Avg. Pages per Extent..................: 8.0
> - Scan Density [Best Count:Actual Count]......: 99.79% [1099623:1
101957]
> - Logical Scan Fragmentation ..............: 0.04%
> - Extent Scan Fragmentation ...............: 9.80%
> - Avg. Bytes Free per Page................: 647.0
> - Avg. Page Density (full)................: 92.01%
> DBCC execution completed. If DBCC printed error messages, contact your
> system administrator.
>
> Could someone give me an idea on how to release the 70 GB of unused space?
> Thanks a lot
> Juan
>|||Ey, you are right, I ran a DBCC updateusage and it fix the numbers, I am
getting now just 300 KB of unused space, this makes sense now.
Thanks a lot, I'll keep on mind to run a DBCC UpdateUsage next time I check
the sizes of my tables.
Juan
"TheSQLGuru" wrote:

> Did you get your numbers below from sp_spaceused? You cannot rely on this
> for accurate information. DBCC updateusage will help.
> Note that from showcontig output your pages are mostly full --> not much
> unused space.
> --
> TheSQLGuru
> President
> Indicium Resources, Inc.
> "Juan" <Juan@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:A6F92E41-49D3-4D64-9123-63FE8740E18E@.microsoft.com...
>
>