Not enough memory in the filegroup PRIMARY + Cannot delete corrupted raster

[RobertBuckley]

I am trying to add data to a raster in an sde-File Geodatabase during which I received an error message complaining that the MSSQL Server sde database ran out of memory. Now my problem is that because the process was not successful, the raster file is now corrupt and cannot be opened or deleted by ArcCatalog. So I can´t delete the corrupt file.

Why does the sde database get so big? Do all my data get copied into the sde database when I register a geodatabase with ArcSDE? The File Geodatabase in question in on my harddrive.

Windows 7 64bit / ArcSDE 9.3 / ArcGIS 10.0

Thanks,

Robert

[VinceAngelo]

It's pretty easy to blow out disk storage when working with rasters.  All it takes
is loading a lossy image in a lossless format, and you can increase storage
requirements by two orders of magnitude or more.

The days of loading rasters in databases ended years ago.  Back at ArcGIS 8.1
it was cutting-edge stuff, but filesystems are much more efficient for storing
raster data, and leaving the files on disk allows you to use multiple image
formats in a single mosaic dataset, and allows you to use more applications
to read and process the data.  Finally, most map services have a cache
generated, which, if you use a database, results in three full copies of the
data residing in a single system.

You should not use ArcSDE 9.x with ArcGIS 10.x for working with rasters.
This goes way beyond the fact that 9.3 is now in Retired support status --
it's retired because of all the enhancements that went into 10.0, 10.1, and
especially 10.2 with respect to rasters, and none of those features are
available with an ancient database interface.

Solutions for removing the jammed raster are posted over in GSE.

- V