Restoring a backup, but out of space

I am trying to restore an old backup to another database.  The backup
is 20GB in size but it keeps telling me that I need an addtional 200GB
in free space.  I've searched and read some of the older postings and
used the RESTORE HEADERONLY command to confirm that:
a) There is only one backup in the backup file
b) It says the BackupSize is only 22GB


I'm using MSSQL 2k with SP3a on Win2k3 Enterprise.  I can't seem to
figure out why the backup will not restore when I have 100GB free on
the drive.  Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks

Hi

Run RESTORE FILELISTONLY to see the file sizes of the data and log files.
You might have a massive data and log file with very little data in it.

Regards
--------------------------------
Mike Epprecht, Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Zurich, Switzerland

IM: mike@epprecht.net

MVP Program: http://www.microsoft.com/mvp

Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/epprecht/

"M" <michael.atwood@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1127918735.762197.296710@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>I am trying to restore an old backup to another database.  The backup
> is 20GB in size but it keeps telling me that I need an addtional 200GB
> in free space.  I've searched and read some of the older postings and
> used the RESTORE HEADERONLY command to confirm that:
> a) There is only one backup in the backup file
> b) It says the BackupSize is only 22GB
>
>
> I'm using MSSQL 2k with SP3a on Win2k3 Enterprise.  I can't seem to
> figure out why the backup will not restore when I have 100GB free on
> the drive.  Any ideas would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks
>

Okay, the problem then is definitely a huge log file (177 GB).  Either
it is was greatly compressed in the backup or it was empty when the
backup ran.  Given that this is a complete database backup, is there
anyway to restore this database without freeing up enough space for the
seemingly empty log file to be restored?

Thanks

I'm afraid not. SQL Server need to be able to create each file with the same
 size as it had when you
took the backup.

--
Tibor Karaszi, SQL Server MVP
http://www.karaszi.com/sqlserver/default.asp
http://www. solidqualitylearning
.com/
Blog: http:// solidqualitylearning
.com/blogs/tibor/


"M" <michael.atwood@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1127920046.810972.279520@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> Okay, the problem then is definitely a huge log file (177 GB).  Either
> it is was greatly compressed in the backup or it was empty when the
> backup ran.  Given that this is a complete database backup, is there
> anyway to restore this database without freeing up enough space for the
> seemingly empty log file to be restored?
>
> Thanks
>

Hi,

No , you can not restore the database unless you have the space free in hard
disk. Only solution is get the hard disk space or
in the source try to shrink the Log file and take the backup. After that you
can backup the database at source again and send it
to destination server to restore.

Thanks
Hari
SQL Server MVP


"M" <michael.atwood@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1127920046.810972.279520@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> Okay, the problem then is definitely a huge log file (177 GB).  Either
> it is was greatly compressed in the backup or it was empty when the
> backup ran.  Given that this is a complete database backup, is there
> anyway to restore this database without freeing up enough space for the
> seemingly empty log file to be restored?
>
> Thanks
>