Sparse Files on Groupwise server

[clytwyn]

I have a netware 5.1 with groupwise 5.5 sp5. Recently I ran out of room on the hard drives, so I added another array. And decided to move my largest Post office folder over to the new array. My current array is only 30GB, yet when I moved the PO folder off of the old array onto the new array it was filling up the new array (140GB) quickly. Reason being was that I had these sparse files that were as big as 4 GB, in total the folder said it was 611GB which doesn't make sense as the array is only 30GB. I've found some documents on the web that say to just delete the sparse files, or restore from an older backup. My older backups have these large sparse files and I wasn't comfortable just deleting the files. Any suggestions

 

[TheLad]

How are you moving it? Is the configuration of the new array the same as the existing configuration?

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"It's true, its damn true!"
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[clytwyn]

I'm using xcopy to move the files. The two array's are raid 5, original array is a 36G, second array is a 140GB

 

[TheLad]

Try using NetWare Copy thru Windows or NCOPY.EXE from a DOS box. NCOPY may give you better results as it is the NetWare copy utility whereas XCOPY probably works in a different way

-----------------------------------------------------
"It's true, its damn true!"
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[terry712]

xcopy doesnt take trustees
admittedly though a groupwise system should have no trustees
but a ncopy is a better method

 

[marvhuffaker]

Hey, about your sparse files.. I ran into a similar thing a while back where I had numerous 4GB files that added up to about 10 times what was actually available on the volume in the first place. Definitely didn't make sense. It didn't report space problems initially, only after I tried copying the volume to a new server.

I decided that the files were corrupt and just reporting incorrectly. I couldn't find a way to resolve it so I just deleted the files and didn't worry about it anymore. It's probably safe to do the same.

Marvin Huffaker MCNE, CNE
Marvin Huffaker Consulting

http://www.redjuju.com

 

[clytwyn]

I haven't had a chance to do anything to them yet as I'm not in the office. I'll try the ncopy and if that doesn't work, I'll delete and see what happens.