Jeff,

> Can you move the data to the local drive and see if maybe network access is what is taking longer than you think? <

Is already local. With this size tables, I always prototype locally. Even when it's a COM server on another machine it will be local to that machine.

> Have you looked at using the profiler to see where your slow down is? Not know where or how you are getting to your data, I'm just guessing.

Sad to say, I don't think that would help, only because the 11 hours were spent on a single REPLACE. FWIW, that replace command was passing an 8 million record table, with two RELATIONS into 4 million record tables. A similar command earlier in the job took 40 minutes. I can see 3 or even 4 hours for this one, but it was the 11 hours and the "coincidences" of it moving on when I killed the Task manager that has me confused.

Thanks for the suggestions, though.