Thanks to all who responded to my problem with the gigantic FPT files in my FO database. We have been working on it all day and have discovered that the problem is in the multimedia part. I had already printed a list before my first query and had 53 people with 132 pictures. The file had been packed also, but wouldn't pack yesterday as was too big. I also couldn't get Gen. Helper to look at it, as it was too big for it too. We followed Kevin's suggestions and worked back and forth with the files between backups and gedcoms. Thanks, Kevin. When I Gedcommed the database into a new place with multimedia to go also, the file was gigantic and took over 30 min. to transfer. The zip backup was abt 70 times larger than the same database zipped without the multimedia's 132 pictures. So we have narrowed it down to being the multimedia part that has increased the files so much. I tried taking out the later pictures and making gedcoms of the people who had the pictures added sooner, but that didn't work either and each file was still gigantic. We just went back through all the old backups on tape and found that the problem seemed back between 1 June 2002 when the .zip was 1.2 MB and 24 Jun 2002 when it became 4.2 MB without adding that many pictures in between. We are going to check the data on each of those backups by restoring them in different databases and check the # of multimedia items on each, but this will take awhile. We have to go to work tomorrow. This problem was gradually sneaking up apparently, and I didn't get any warning until my section of the hard drive started filling up. My husband regularly defrags all the partitions and checks for space and he didn't notice it either. I have no idea what could have happened between 1 and 24 June. The problem has been accelerating since then and finally almost filled my partition on our hard drive. We never did get a warning from Windows, just noticed that the partition was almost full when I hadn't added that much more during the holidays. Do any of you have any idea why the multimedia would suddenly start showing so many items, 3,562,711 at last count, when there are only 132 pictures in the file? It does sound like the pointers have become messed up, but how? It looks like I'll have to reenter the 132 pictures, but what's to keep this from happening again? This seemed to start after FO 10 had been installed for about 6 months. This has gotten rather long. Thank you all for your suggestions, and I hope you can come up with more to help figure this out. Hope this made sense, as I'm rather tired from dealing with this all day. Thanks all. Marg McEuen

Margaret McEuen <MargMcEuen@prodigy.net> wrote: >When I Gedcommed the database into a new place with multimedia to go >also, the file was gigantic and took over 30 min. to transfer. The zip >backup was abt 70 times larger than the same database zipped without the >multimedia's 132 pictures. FO does not incorporate multimedia files into its database ... only the links to those are in the database and that could not account for the huge increase you are seeing. There was a fault discovered quite a while back where a gedcom export would hang up and stop before it was completed. One reason for such an error was an extra long line in a note or a source that had no spaces, such as a website URL. That particular trouble had been corrected by the time FO10 came along, but there might be other configurations that would still cause the trouble. When it happened and the gedcom stopped, it you would notice carefully, the gedcom being formed is still being added to but nothing is showing on screen. If you don't cancel the operation, the gedcom file will keep on increasing in size until (I supposed) the disk is full. (Dragging and dropping databases or parts of databases is the same operation internally in FO as exporting a gedcom file and then importing it back to the new database.) It sounds like the same thing is happening for you. I don't know what may be causing it ... the long line problem has been fixed ... but all possible gedcom malformations obviously have not been discovered yet. The way I would tackle the problem is to export a gedcom file and watch very closely as it counts the people exported. If the counting stops and hangs, cancel it immediately, note the number where it stops and try to determine which individual it stopped on. Then try exporting a gedcom with only that individual. If you can find the individual whose data is somehow causing the problem, you could delete that person and re-enter his data and hopefully eliminate the problem. But now that you have such a huge database .... you must have tons of duplicated material there. Unless you have a backup from before the trouble started, you probably have lots of work to do to get it straightened out. Wayne League

Are you certain you do not have a virus? J ----- Original Message ----- From: "Margaret McEuen" <MargMcEuen@prodigy.net> To: <FAMILY-ORIGINS-USERS-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Sunday, January 12, 2003 10:10 PM Subject: [FO] More on Gigantic FPT files Thanks to all who responded to my problem with the gigantic FPT files in my FO database. We have been working on it all day and have discovered that the problem is in the multimedia part. I had already printed a list before my first query and had 53 people with 132 pictures. The file had been packed also, but wouldn't pack yesterday as was too big. I also couldn't get Gen. Helper to look at it, as it was too big for it too. We followed Kevin's suggestions and worked back and forth with the files between backups and gedcoms. Thanks, Kevin. When I Gedcommed the database into a new place with multimedia to go also, the file was gigantic and took over 30 min. to transfer. The zip backup was abt 70 times larger than the same database zipped without the multimedia's 132 pictures. So we have narrowed it down to being the multimedia part that has increased the files so much. I tried taking out the later pictures and making gedcoms of the people who had the pictures added sooner, but that didn't work either and each file was still gigantic. We just went back through all the old backups on tape and found that the problem seemed back between 1 June 2002 when the .zip was 1.2 MB and 24 Jun 2002 when it became 4.2 MB without adding that many pictures in between. We are going to check the data on each of those backups by restoring them in different databases and check the # of multimedia items on each, but this will take awhile. We have to go to work tomorrow. This problem was gradually sneaking up apparently, and I didn't get any warning until my section of the hard drive started filling up. My husband regularly defrags all the partitions and checks for space and he didn't notice it either. I have no idea what could have happened between 1 and 24 June. The problem has been accelerating since then and finally almost filled my partition on our hard drive. We never did get a warning from Windows, just noticed that the partition was almost full when I hadn't added that much more during the holidays. Do any of you have any idea why the multimedia would suddenly start showing so many items, 3,562,711 at last count, when there are only 132 pictures in the file? It does sound like the pointers have become messed up, but how? It looks like I'll have to reenter the 132 pictures, but what's to keep this from happening again? This seemed to start after FO 10 had been installed for about 6 months. This has gotten rather long. Thank you all for your suggestions, and I hope you can come up with more to help figure this out. Hope this made sense, as I'm rather tired from dealing with this all day. Thanks all. Marg McEuen ==== FAMILY-ORIGINS-USERS Mailing List ==== PLEASE remove as much of the Original Message as possible when replying to a List Posting. Include only that part of the original message important to your reply. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.435 / Virus Database: 244 - Release Date: 12/30/2002