Difficulty compressing a large file - compact command fails

Question

I am trying to compress a 419 GB SQL Server database, following the instructions in the compression example described here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190257(v=sql.90).aspx
I have set the filegroup to read-only, and taken the database offline.  I logged into the server that hosts the file, and ran this from a command prompt:
===================================================== 
F:\Database>compact /c CE_SecurityLogsArchive_DataSecondary.ndf
Compressing files in F:\Database\
CE_SecurityLogsArchive_DataSecondary.ndf [ERR]
CE_SecurityLogsArchive_DataSecondary.ndf: Insufficient system resources exist to
complete the requested service.
0 files within 1 directories were compressed.
0 total bytes of data are stored in 0 bytes.
The compression ratio is 1.0 to 1.
F:\Database>
===============================================
As you can see, it gave me an error: "Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service."  The drive has 564 GB free, so I doubt that is the issue.  Here are some specs on the server:
MS Windows Server 2003 R2, Enterprise x64 Edition, SP2
Intel Xeon E7420 CPU @ 2.13 GHz; 8 logical processors (8 physical)
7.99 GB RAM
Any suggestions how to handle this?  I really need to get this large file compressed, and this method seems appealing if I can make it work, because you can supposedly continue to query from the database even though it has been compressed.  If
I use a compression utility like 7Zip, I doubt that I'll be able to query from the compressed file.

Answer 1

Hi,
Based on my knowledge, if you compress a file that is larger than 30 gigabytes, the compression may not succeed.
For detailed information:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa364219(VS.85).aspx
Regards,
Yan Li
Regards, Yan Li