Posted by Plamen Ratchev on 04/23/07 21:08

Yes, BCP will be a good option for fast data transfer. All of the BULK
operations (BULK INSERT, SELECT INTO, BCP) are minimally logged when a non
FULL recovery model is set.

Another issue could be the purging of the archived records from your main
table. If you have it as a single DELETE and it takes long time to complete,
then you can break it into smaller DELETE chunks.

If you have SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition, an interesting alternative
is to use partitioned tables. Specifically range partitions based on date
ranges (in your case could be weekly) can help with archiving. Take a look
at the following article (in particular the section about Range Partitions):
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms345146.aspx

HTH,

Plamen Ratchev
http://www.SQLStudio.com

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