Restoring with replace going incredibly quickly So I have a database (on a SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 instance) that is 2TB uncompressed, with a .bak file that is 500GB compressed. As I have been toying with the fastest way to restore this database after a series of tests, I've tried a couple of things:


Restoring after dropping the database
Restoring with Replace


When I restore after dropping the database, the fastest I can get a restore going is 4 hours. This is when I put the .bak on a RAID 10 logical drive, with the data files being written to a separate RAID 10 logical drive on the same server. The log files go to yet another RAID 0 on the same server.

However, if I restore with Replace, the restore process only takes 56 minutes (similar setup). Did I find some sort of turbo button? This is so fast that I am worried.
The RESTORE DATABASE ... WITH (REPLACE) does not have to create the 2 TB .mdf file.  This is why it is so much quicker.   You may want to look into instant file initialization.