Problems compacting a database

W

William Gower

I have a database that is a little over 2 GB in size. I am trying to
compact it and I keep getting the error "Not enough space on disk". I know
that i have plenty of room on my hard drive for this to occur. Is the
database corrupted? Is there anything I can do to salvage it?
 
6

'69 Camaro

Hi, William.
compact it and I keep getting the error "Not enough space on disk". I know
that i have plenty of room on my hard drive for this to occur.
Click to expand...

I've come across only three reasons for this error:

1.) When there really isn't enough disk space on the disk partition,
2.) The compacted database file is going to be written (unsuccessfully) to
a read-only directory, or
3.) My user account doesn't have security permissions to create a file in
the directory where the copy of the Access database will be placed during
compaction. Your database needs a minimum of "a little over 2 GB" disk
space available for that copied file during compaction.

You may have plenty of room on your hard drive, but your operating system
may have only allotted a certain amount of room for "Temp" disk space, which
a copy of your Access database doesn't fit into.

You'll need to do some investigation. You user account may have a set quota
that it is exceeding, or the disk may need to be cleaned up by removing temp
files, internet files, and emptying the Recycle Bin. Check your user
account security permissions on the directory where the compacted database
will be saved. Check that this directory is not read-only.

HTH.

Gunny

See http://www.QBuilt.com for all your database needs.
See http://www.Access.QBuilt.com for Microsoft Access tips.

(Please remove ZERO_SPAM from my reply E-mail address, so that a message
will be forwarded to me.)
 
M

M.L. Sco Scofield

To add to what Gunny said, as 2 GIG is the published maximum for an Access
2000, 2002, and 2003 mdb file, you may have a corruption issue.

Before you do *anything* else, make sure you are working with a copy of the
mdb file.

If Gunny's suggestions work, great.

If they don't, make an brand new, empty database and import everything but
the tables.

Next, make another new, empty database and import just the tables.

This should help get you under the 2 GIG limit. If this works without any
errors, then link the first database (now the "front-end") to the second
database (now the "back-end".)

Even with a single user, single computer database, it should be split like
this.

If none of these procedures work, then you have a truly corrupted database.

If that's the case, take a look at Tony's corruption page at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/corruptmdbs.htm for some more suggestions.

Good luck.

Sco

M.L. "Sco" Scofield, Microsoft Access MVP, MCSD, MCP, MSS, A+
Useful Metric Conversion #17 of 19: 1 billion billion picolos = 1 gigolo
Miscellaneous Access and VB "stuff" at www.ScoBiz.com
 
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