[dba-SQLServer] Best way to do a large delete

I have to do a delete from a table with about 25 million rows.  I need to
delete about 4 million rows, based on the date in another table

Table Session

SessionID	SessionDate
1		1/25/2004
2		7/25/2001
I have created a view (SessionView) containing all sessionid's where the
sessiondate less than 3 years old.

(Create view SessionView
As
Select SessionID
>From Session
Where
Session.sessiondate >= getdate() - 1095)


Table Claims

ClaimID	SessionID		etc	etc			etc
24578		1			15	HealthPractice	5554441234
6548975	2			52	ChirocPract		5551234567

What I need is to delete all rows from Table Claims that have sessionids in
SessionView.

Delete
>From Claims
Where Claims.sessionID In (Select SessionID from SessionView)

-In this case ClaimID 6548975 would be deleted but ClaimID 24578 would not.

But I must be doing something wrong (I am very new at SQL Server, and have
never done a large scale delete that wasn't just straight forward), because
the delete seems to take forever.  Last time I had to stop it at just over 5
hours because the network admin needed to do some work on the server and
reboot it.

I have set the recovery to simple, and the server has no other active
databases or other applications running on it.

Any assistance appreciated.

Nancy Lytle
N_Lytle at terplaum.umd.edu

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