Database duplicating self!?

[Carl]

Twice now in the past two weeks I have had my largest db (table has over 400,000 lines) attempt (and suceed) in multiplying itself by creating new db's (which is calls (db1, db2, etc) until it fills my computer with a "c drive full" message.

It does this when I do a "repair and compact database".

Thought I had killed it last week when I
1) Opened a new db and imported my tables into it and
2) Deleted the old db that I thought was causing the trouble.

But, apparently not. Anybody know what's happening to me? Have Bill and I invented a new silicon based life form? And, if so, where can I get a can of Raid?

later,
Carl

[Rick]

Sounds like you need a larger hard drive. You can easily get 25gb or larger drive on sale from Home Depot, Office Max, or Circuit City for $100 or less. Unless you can free up some disk space you should think about a larger drive.

I am not an expert on how Access does it repair job, but it looks like you need as much free disk space as the size of your database for Access to use as workspace.

My guess is that Access renames your db to db1 and then copies it back to your original db name; or something like that.

I am sure someone else can give a better explanation than me.

It doesn't take long to eat up a few gb with htr files and dbs.

This is from the Access 2002 help file
If you use the same name, drive, and folder, and the Access database or Access project is compacted successfully, Microsoft Access replaces the original file with the compacted version.

[Carl]

Thanks Rick.

You are rapidly getting up there IMO to "you are the man" status. I really appreciate you knowing stuff like that about Access and being willing to share it. Makes me feel a whole lot better knowing that my program is "doing what it should" instead of cloning for no reason.

Thanks buddy.

later,
Carl

[MikeDee]

Carl had this happen to me once before to. For some reason when it does a compact db it doesn't like something and makes a copy of itself called db1. It will keep doing this every time you compact the db.

what I did was look over the db it made(db1). It was OK, so then I deleted my db and then renamed db1 to the name of my db and everything was OK from then on.

[Carl]

Yeah, it is a little strange Mike. I had 1.3 GB left in memory, so maybe that was not the problem.

I tried it again today after Rick's post, figuring I would use the new one if it was smaller, but/and this time it compacted the old one fine! (Without making a new copy.)

Thanks for the post.

later,
Carl