Amen. I was a new DBA at a company that used a DBMS which used extent based disk allocation with a default extent size of 16kb. That was a problem on a busy table (which this was), because there was a finite limit to the number of extents that could allocated, but that limit was impossible to predict.<p>The proactive fix was simple. Backup, restore the table in a two hour outage window. I asked for 5 hours, as the previous DBA never tested a restore. &quot;Unacceptable&quot;, said the SVP.<p>Fast forward two weeks. We hit the limit, and the entire company is essentially down. Between lost revenue, SLA fines and payroll, they were losing something like $5k&#x2F;minute. Recovery at this point required 30 hours of full database restore, including journal recoveries from slooooow DAT tapes.<p>There were three of us, everyone stayed calm, provided regular updates and handled a few hours of direct observation by the CEO and a board member for a few hours.