Split existing Partition - Grows log file in GBs and take hours to run

Hi,

I have an existing table with around 200 Million rows and couple of partitions.

I would like to split the partitions

e.g. the Latest partition hold the data where date >= '2012-01-01' and I want to create more partitions which holds the data for each quarter of 2012 and 2013... so roughly the highest partition will be split into 7 partitions i.e. 6 partitions to hold data for each quarter up to 06/2013 and 7 will be empty partition.

I tried the following but it grows the log file to 40 GB and ran for hours for just 1 split .. and I have to do 7 splits.

ALTER PARTITION SCHEME fn_schemename
	NEXT USED [Primary];ALTER PARTITION FUNCTION fn_schemename()
	SPLIT RANGE(N'2012-03-31T00:00:00.000');

Is there any other way to avoid the log growth.

One I think of is:

1. Create a new table Table_B. 
2. Create the required partitions using the existing partition scheme and functions.
3. Copy the data from Table_A  to Table_B
4. Drop the Table_A.
5. Rename the Table_B  to Table_A

Have I missed any step? Is there any other way to avid log file increase and reduce the split time.

Regards,

Zee Ash