We use most of the things on your list. I also wind up installing at least part of the UnxUtils toolkit, as well as cURL and Wget, for dealing with files and foreign sites.

* Kdiff/CompareIt - compare 2+ files.
* Log Parser does just what it says: parses logs, from pretty much any source, and allows you to run mock-SQL on it.
* SQLTeam's Cleartrace (brief report based on a trace file - what was run, how much CPU/IO each took on average and in aggregate) is a must.
* SQLTeam ScriptIO - what SSMS SHOULD do when you right-click to script out (yes, you can use the Generate Scripts option, but it seems half-assed). Quickly script out objects including all secondaries like indexes, triggers, etc. Sadly, I can't get ScriptIO working on my new machine, and ScriptIO is almost indispensable.
* RML utilities - parse and report from a trace. Surprisingly cool and quite effective. Cleartrace meets Reporting Services.
* Treesize - easily figure out where all your disk space went. Every IT person I use it with likes it.

Then there's the standard big-name apps I think everyone has/uses: Spotlight (pricy but useful), SQLSentry (ftw!), Litespeed (anyone with >10gb databases should use this), SQL Compare/SQL Data Compare. And a small little app from years ago that nobody ever heard of: Lecco SQL Expert (now resold by Quest as SQL Tuning). Takes your query and runs through 200+ variants to game the optimizer. When it works (not every query can benefit) it's nothing short of stunning. Pity it's so hard to actually get (either buy it via Toad and commit to using Toad, or buy it with Spotlight on a per-server license, which is probably way expensive)

And one app that's not SQL based but still amazingly cool: Launchy. CTRL+Space, then start typing the name of the app you need. Addictive.

Posted by: mbourgon | Aug 19, 2010 8:11:30 AM

Thanks for the bit about ESEUTIL, btw - I'd never heard of that. That's strange, but hey, if it works...
Also one other thing I've run in the past, for small (<2gb) files: Rsync. If you set up an Rsync server on the far side of a network, it'll compress the data as it sends it. I think I was getting 8:1 compression, which definitely makes things fly.
Unfortunately, the Windows port can only do files under 2gb.

Posted by: mbourgon | Aug 19, 2010 2:16:38 PM

ESEUTIL works very well , particuarly for ad hoc copies - usually about 50% of the normal copy time . And normally is effective if other apps are buffering heavily. The only minor problem is that it doesn't replace the target file if the same name exists - in those situations I have to script a file remove prior to copy

Posted by: Jack Vamvas | Aug 21, 2010 5:14:40 AM

mbourgon - I've added your suggestions to the list

Posted by: Jack Vamvas | Dec 13, 2012 7:13:12 AM