Why Are My Memo Files 2GB

[jjjt]

We have a problem where at times our users experience an error saying: "There Is Not Enough Disk Space For....."
The message ends with the name of a memo file.

As it happens there is loads of space for the memo file over 90GB but the memo file itself is just over 2GB. The corresponding table has 8701 records with 13 memo fields in it amongst the other fields.

After a PACK the memo file goes back to being smaller than the table.

Why is the memo file getting so large. I take it there is a limit of 2GB on memo files causing the original error?

 

[dbMark]

With the simple character, numeric, logical and certain other fields, when data is replaced with new information or even simply cleared, the original data is overwritten and there is no increase in table size (although changes to indexed fields will enlarge the index file). On the other hand, putting more characters or data into a memo field that that makes it longer enough to require a larger number of blocks will force it to abandon the old data area and write the new larger data to the end of the .FPT file.

PACKing the table does 2 things: It (1) reduces the size of the memo data that originally had been larger but is now smaller and (2) abandoned data sections that were too small for the newer data.

Just as the programmer has to be aware that character fields are limited to 254 characters and tables are limited to 254 fields and programs need to be written with the awareness that periodically indexed tables should be reindexed (either to minimize risk of corruption or to reduce their size from edit bloat) and deleted records need to be removed from tables, so too memo fields need to be packed to remove old data. The frequency of this maintenance varies depending on how much editing is done, storage space (not as big an issue with today's larger drives) and that pesky 2-Gig file size limit.

dbMark