>Bruce,
>
>>Well, it was very fast until the COPY TO. Then it got almost completely stuck on COPY TO :(
>
>Do you need to get it into a table ? Can work from the filtered table directly (maybe reporting, displaying in grid etc) ? IOW what do you want to do with your table ?
>
>Seems you've got performance trouble writing data to the disk, maybe you should aviod writing data. Is you HD defragmented ? Maybe you can try to write it to another (network) drive.

Hard drive should be okay - the COPY TO is doing something like the SQL...NOT IN, apparently - something very slow that does full table access. Even though the "virtual" copy using BROW is quick to display, it may be only because a few records are displayed at a time, I suspect. Scrolling slowed down again..

Also, it must be pulled into a table where I can manipulate the data - in fact, I don't need the BROW at all, this is all data processing work. I was just going to hide the BROW if the the idea worked. Maybe Edward's idea of SET OPTI OFF might help the COPY TO performance...