I have come across to the post "should I shrink my database" many times, this is certainly not recommended unless it is required. When we have ample space on the hard drive let it be in the size it is.
Because what happens is when you shrink it and as time passes by it would required to grow again and this time it again involves your CPU and I/O cycle which would be costly affair; again, herealso there may be counter arguments too but this is what certainly not recommended on other hand it *depneds* on case to case bases.
What we should really do is to investigate the reasons, why it has grown that big (if you feel so) for example
1. Auto growth option,
2. Activities like BCP/Bulk insert,
3. Reindex,
4. defregment of database
Please refer Tibor Karsazi's article here on the same topic http://www.karaszi.com/SQLServer/info_dont_shrink.asp
Hope this would helps.
