"to change the original seed value and reseed any existing rows, you must drop the identity column and recreate it specifying the new seed value. when the table contains data, the identity numbers are added to the existing rows with the specified seed and increment values.. I have inserted records into a sql server database table. the table had a primary key defined and the auto increment identity seed is set to �yes�. this is done primarily because in sql azure, each table has to have a primary key and identity defined.. Adding an identity to an existing column. ask question then instead of dbcc checkident you'll want to manually set the identity seed value in the new table schema to be larger than the largest existing id in the table, browse other questions tagged sql sql-server alter-table identity-column or ask your own question. asked..