“Primary Filegroup is Full” in SQL Server 2008 Standard for no apparent reason

Question

Our database is currently at 64 Gb and one of our apps started to fail with the following error:

System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Coul

Answer 1

I also ran into the same problem, where the initial dtabase size is set to 4Gb and autogrowth is set by 1Mb. The virtual encrypted TrueCrypt drive that the databse was on, seemed to have plenty of space.

I changed a couple of (the above) things:

• I turned the Windows service for Sql Server Express from automatic to manual, so only the 'regular' Sql Server is running. (Even though I am running Sql Server 2008 R2 which should allow 10 GB.)
• I changed the autogrowth from 1 MB to 10%
• I changed the autogrowth increment-size from 10% to 1000 MB
• I defragmented the drive
• I shrank the database:
  • manually DBCC SHRINKDATABASE('...')
  • automatically right click on database | "properties" | "Auto Shrink" | "Truncate log on check point")

All to little avail (I could insert some more records, but soon ran into the same problem). The pagefile mentioned by Tobbi, made me try a larger virtual drive. (Even though my drive should not contain any such system files, since I run without it being mounted a lot of the time.)

• I made a new larger virtual drive with TrueCrypt

When making this, I ran into a TrueCrypt-question, if I am going to store files larger than 4gb (as shown in this SuperUser question).

• I told TrueCrypt I would store files larger than 4 GB

After these last two I was doing fine, and I am assuming this last one did the trick. I think TrueCrypt chooses an exfat file system (as described here), which limits all files to 4GB. (So I probably did not need to enlarge the drive after all, but I did anyway.)

This is probably a very rare border case, but maybe it is of help to somebody.