Database Size Troubleshooting I have a SQL Server database and the .MDF file is almost 9GB in size. However, the data and indexes only seem to be taking up a little over 1GB. I've shrunk the database (with and without reorganization) and I've shrunk the database files.

What's next? How do I find what is taking up so much space?
This is a bit long for a comment so I'm putting it here.

First try running this:

exec sp_msforeachtable 'sp_spaceused [?]'


Yes I realize it uses sp_msforeachtable and there are a number of better methods, this is just quick and hopefully "good enough".

At a guess you have a heap (no clustered index) that has a large amount of "unused" space.  I wrote about how to duplicate it here.  If in the list of tables you find one that has a large amount of space shown in the unused column then try running this:

ALTER TABLE tablename REBUILD


Fair warning it may take up some space to run the operation but it should free up the excess space in the table.