I currently have a SQL Server instance I manage with a 1TB hard drive and 100GB free. Because of the RAID setup, they are quite pricey for our small business to add more hard drive space. Also we are getting rid of the server in the near future, so don't want to invest anymore in it. That being said, the software application we use stores bunches of images in the database, and the database side is growing at a rate of 30GB a month, so in 3 months, I expect us to be at near capacity. The thing is, we have 7 years of pictures in this database and only need 1-2 years. I expect to delete 5 years worth of pictures to free up space. However, my understanding is with AutoGrowth and the way SQL Server allocates disk space, just simply deleting the records may not free up space like I would expect without doing a shrink (and I know all the bad things that go along with that, indexing, performance, etc.). So my question is, how do I get rid of these old pictures stored in a single table and reclaim that space, to buy us enough time for the next 6 months - 1 year until we deactivate this server anyways?