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How to: Drop a Database Snapshot (Transact-SQL)

Any user in the database with DROP DATABASE permissions can drop a database snapshot by using Transact-SQL.

When you drop a database snapshot, all user connections to it are terminated.

To drop a database snapshot

  1. Identify the database snapshot that you want to drop. You can view the snapshots on a database in SQL Server Management Studio (see How to: View a Database Snapshot (SQL Server Management Studio)).

  2. Issue a DROP DATABASE statement, specifying the name of the database snapshot to be dropped.

Example

This example drops a database snapshot named SalesSnapshot0600, without affecting the source database.

DROP DATABASE SalesSnapshot0600

Any user connections to SalesSnapshot0600 are terminated, and all of the NTFS file system sparse files used by the snapshot are deleted. For information about the use of sparse files by database snapshots, see How Database Snapshots Work.