> ...so insert into is more expensive.
>
>And if retaining previously stored information weren't necessary, that would actually matter.... <s>

True. One possibility would be to do a backup before running this procedure, change recovery mode to simple, do the archiving operation, change recovery mode back to what it was.

Assuming, of course, archiving is not done during high pick hours.

You can also select information into text file and then bcp back to archive table.