Over the weekend my content DB went from 89gb to 590gb (thus crashing the SQL server). I think I traced the problem to a script that was updating a docuement library. The problem was we had versioning and everytime a file was uploaded it created a new version. I have turned off versioning but the content DB is still huge. When I check SQL Management it show the space as being used. Is there a way to free up that space?

If you turned off versionning, it should completely delete the previous versions. But the space used on the disk is not recoverd. The size of your database on disk will stay the same, but there will be white space in the database. From this document: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262731(office.12).aspx In SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2005, and SQL Server 2000, you can shrink each file within a database (extensions .mdf, .ldf, and .ndf) to remove unused pages and recover disk space. SharePoint Products and Technologies databases do not automatically shrink data files, although many activities create white space in the database. Activities that can create white space include running the Stsadm mergecontentdbs operation, and deleting documents, document libraries, lists, list items, and sites. In the same document it is explained how to shrink the database to recover the white space. Before doing any actions, make sure that you have a good backup! Serge Serge

If you limit versions and upload a new version, it should delete previous versions. Have a look at this: http://vspug.com/agoodwin/2008/04/01/how-to-delete-historical-document-versions-in-wss-3-moss-not-entirely-simple/Planet Technologies || SharePoint Task Force

I have manually trimmed over 3 gigs of versions and then empty them from both recycle bin but the SQL manager still says the DB is the same size (actually went up a bit) and explorer is showing the data file to be teh same size. Any idea?

Have a look at a previous answer where I explained the white space. SergeSerge