The Difference Between the DATETIME and SMALLDATETIME Data Types

2008-10-04 By Rob Symonds

DATETIME requires 8 bytes of storage and stores dates from 1/1/1753 to 12/31/9999. It is accurate to about 3 milliseconds.

SMALLDATETIME requires only 4 bytes of storage. It can stores dates from 1/1/1900 to 6/6/2079 and is accurate to 1 minute.

If you’re not in the mood to wade through BOL, you can find a quick overview with a fair amount of detail on SQL Server datatypes here.