Move Primary Key to Filegroup (SQL Server 2012)

How can I move a clustered primary key to a new filegroup? I already have found a possible "algorithm" but it is horribly inefficient:

• Drop non-clustered indexed (requires them to be resorted and rebuilt)

• Drop clustered index (requires the whole table to be resorted)

• Create new primary key constraint (huge sort operation)

• Create all non-clustered indexes (sorting and writing required)

Is there a more efficient way? This is horribly inefficient and will take a long time as the table is 50GB in size on a weak server.

Isn't there a way to skip all of these and just do a rebuild on a new filegroup? That would not require any sorting of data.

CREATE UNIQUE CLUSTERED INDEX Your_PK_Name
    ON YourTable(YourColumnList)
WITH (DROP_EXISTING =  ON )
ON [YourOtherFileGroup]

This preserves the logical PK property despite it not being mentioned in the syntax.

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#28872, answer score: 30