Reset identity seed after deleting records in SQL Server

It should be noted that IF all of the data is being removed from the table via the DELETE (i.e. no WHERE clause), then as long as a) permissions allow for it, and b) there are no FKs referencing the table (which appears to be the case here), using TRUNCATE TABLE would be preferred as it does a more efficient DELETE and resets the IDENTITY seed at the same time. The following details are taken from the MSDN page for TRUNCATE TABLE:

Compared to the DELETE statement, TRUNCATE TABLE has the following advantages:

  • Less transaction log space is used.

    The DELETE statement removes rows one at a time and records an entry in the transaction log for each deleted row. TRUNCATE TABLE removes the data by deallocating the data pages used to store the table data and records only the page deallocations in the transaction log.

  • Fewer locks are typically used.

    When the DELETE statement is executed using a row lock, each row in the table is locked for deletion. TRUNCATE TABLE always locks the table (including a schema (SCH-M) lock) and page but not each row.

  • Without exception, zero pages are left in the table.

    After a DELETE statement is executed, the table can still contain empty pages. For example, empty pages in a heap cannot be deallocated without at least an exclusive (LCK_M_X) table lock. If the delete operation does not use a table lock, the table (heap) will contain many empty pages. For indexes, the delete operation can leave empty pages behind, although these pages will be deallocated quickly by a background cleanup process.

If the table contains an identity column, the counter for that column is reset to the seed value defined for the column. If no seed was defined, the default value 1 is used. To retain the identity counter, use DELETE instead.

So the following:

DELETE FROM [MyTable];
DBCC CHECKIDENT ('[MyTable]', RESEED, 0);

Becomes just:

TRUNCATE TABLE [MyTable];

Please see the TRUNCATE TABLE documentation (linked above) for additional information on restrictions, etc.


DBCC CHECKIDENT ('TestTable', RESEED, 0)
GO

Where 0 is identity Start value


Although most answers are suggesting RESEED to 0, many times we need to just reseed to next Id available

declare @max int
select @max=max([Id]) from [TestTable]
if @max IS NULL   --check when max is returned as null
  SET @max = 0
DBCC CHECKIDENT ('[TestTable]', RESEED, @max)

This will check the table and reset to the next ID.


The DBCC CHECKIDENT management command is used to reset identity counter. The command syntax is:

DBCC CHECKIDENT (table_name [, { NORESEED | { RESEED [, new_reseed_value ]}}])
[ WITH NO_INFOMSGS ]

Example:

DBCC CHECKIDENT ('[TestTable]', RESEED, 0);
GO

It was not supported in previous versions of the Azure SQL Database but is supported now.


Thanks to Solomon Rutzky the docs for the command are now fixed.