Failed Raster to Geodatabase

[ChristopherBlinn1]

Hello,

I have an .img raster that I am trying to import into a SDE.

I have tried to run this process multiple times but this error keeps occurring:

Executing: RasterToGeodatabase D:\CLIP\ortho05.img "Database Connections\SDE.DATABASE.USER.sde" #
Start Time: Thu Jul 14 10:36:18 2011
Running script RasterToGeodatabase...
Failed to convert D:\CLIP\ortho05.img. ERROR 999999: Error executing function.
Network I/O error [DATABASE.USER.ortho05]
Failed to execute (CopyRaster).

Completed script RasterToGeodatabase...
Succeeded at Thu Jul 14 11:24:22 2011 (Elapsed Time: 48 minutes 4 seconds)

I have killed all instances accessing the SDE before running the tool, and triple-checked to make sure my user has read/write permissions to the database.  Not sure what the problem is or why I cannot access the database all of a sudden during the process.

Any suggestions?

ArcSDE 9.3.1
Microsoft SQL Server
ArcCatalog 10

Regards,

Chris B.
Evansville, IN

[VinceAngelo]

Which version or SQL Server are you using?  Which service pack?

How large is the raster (H x W x P & disk storage)?

What compression algorithm and options are you using for import?

- V

[ChristopherBlinn1]

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition SP2
SQL Enterprise Manager Vers. 8

Raster: 152844 Columns, 257489 Rows, 8 Bit, .5x.5 cellsize, 109.96 GB uncompressed

Default import settings. No compression.

[VinceAngelo]

Most raster load failures have to do with I/O runtime of the session. SQL-Server 2000 was
famous (or, rather, infamous) for not sustaining long connections. Are you running the
required SP4 build for ArcSDE 9.3.1 support?

Using lossless (LZ77) compression is always faster in both load and query than NONE compression.

You may need to clip that image into 32k X 32k chunks, then mosaic it back in to prevent the
database from failing (use the UL tile first, working the load across from left to right before
dropping south; be sure to disable pyramid construction until after the load is complete).

- V

[ChristopherBlinn1]

The Split Raster process ran without error, however all of the new smaller rasters have NoData pixel values for each RGB band.

I tried rebuilding the pyramids on one of the smaller images but was unsuccessful in addressing the issue.  I do not understand why I am having so much trouble, but then again I do not have a lot of experience working with rasters of this size.

As of now, we still have an ortho image (.img) on a virtual machine drive (the output location of the clip process) needing to be put on an SDE (located on an entirely different machine).  Import to geodatabase failed, export to different type failed, and now splitting the raster has failed.  Any other ideas, or better approaches we can take to solve this issue?