Hi,
the first question is, does this table has a BLOB column or not (e.g. NVARCHAR(MAX)). And if yes, is the BLOB column the one, that makes the table so big. If it has such a column (which I assume) it will not compress very well, as only the non-BLOB columns will compress.
You can try a different approach, which we use several times at other customers to move/compact such big tables.
<draft>
- create a second filegroup with some files
- run an create index command on that table and specify this new filegroup
(CREATE INDEX ... WITH DROP_EXISTING ... TO FILEGROUP) - This will move the table from the current PRIMARY filegroup to the new files
- Add files to your primary filegroup
- Repeat the CREATE INDEX command and specify the PRIMARY filegroup again (and specify the compression flags)
- This will move the table back to the PRIMARY filegroup and spread it over all files (including the new ones)
- drop the new filegroup
</draft>
Best regards
Clas