SQL Server DateTime data types, ranges, accuracy and default values

SQL Server offers different useful datetime data types for different purposes. Knowing all and their capabilities would definitely help you to decide the type to be used. Here are the most important properties of them. Click on the links for more information.

Data type	Range from	to	Default value	Accuracy
Date (1-3 bytes )	0001-01-01	9999-12-31	1900-01-01	One day
Datetime (8 bytes)	1753-01-01	9999-12-31	1900-01-01 00:00:00.000	Rounded to increments of .000, .003, or .007 seconds
Datetime2 (6-8 bytes)	0001-01-01	9999-12-31	1900-01-01 00:00:00.0000000	100 nanoseconds
datetimeoffset (10 bytes)	0001-01-01	9999-12-31	1900-01-01 00:00:00.0000000 +00:00	100 nanoseconds
Smalldatetime (4 bytes)	1900-01-01	2076-06-06	1900-01-01 00:00:00	One minute
Time (5 bytes)	00:00:00.0000000	23:59:59.9999999	00:00:00.0000000	100 nanoseconds