Thanks Martijn,

I'm kinda new to Firebird so I guess I don't know the mechanics of
what is going on during garbage collection. Are you saying that if I
backup and restore without garbage collection that it will remove the
offending rows? That would be great.

Barry

--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, "Martijn Tonies"
<m.tonies@u...> wrote:

> Hi Barry,
>
>
> > But I will still need to clean up the 17 million deleted records.
>
> Not if you restore the database afterwards, right?
>
> Or, try a " select count(*) from table_where_you_delete_the_rows "
> That might clean the garbage as well.
>
> With regards,
>
> Martijn Tonies
> Database Workbench - developer tool for InterBase, Firebird, MySQL

& MS SQL

> Server.
> Upscene Productions
> http://www.upscene.com
>
>
> > Barry
> >
> > --- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, "Martijn Tonies"
> > <m.tonies@u...> wrote:
> > > Hi Barry,
> > >
> > > > I have inherited a database that was not maintained for some

time.

> > > > Unfortunately the designer also designed it to create a huge
> > amount
> > > > of uneeded audit records (18 million records). The single

file

> > DB is
> > > > approching 3.7gig and is about to run out of room.
> > > >
> > > > 3 weeks ago I was able to backup the entire DB.
> > > >
> > > > I then deleted the offending 18M rows
> > > >
> > > > I then tried to do a backup and the process ran for nearly 48
> > hours
> > > > before I had to kill it. The CPU usage goes straight to 100%

and

> > > > stays there. I finaly had to kill it because the customer

needed

> > to
> > > > print from this machine (another great idea by someone to put

the

> > > > print que's for the site on this machine).
> > >
> > > If you want to create a backup "just" for a restore, turn OFF
> > > "garbage collection" when doing the backup.