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The SQL Server error I encounter as below:

Could not allocate space for object 'dbo.xxx'.'PK_xxx' in database 'mainDB' because the 'PRIMARY' filegroup is full. Create disk space by deleting unneeded files, dropping objects in the filegroup, adding additional files to the filegroup, or setting autogrowth on for existing files in the filegroup.

My question is why the MDF file size is limited to only 4GB while the SQL instance running is SQL Server 2008 Express Edition (which I found it supposed to be 10GB instead).

foo0110
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    Because Microsoft (their marketing folks) decided it to be so..... SQL Server 2008 is still limited to 4GB, but the 2008 **R2** release has a limit of 10 GB – marc_s Jun 29 '11 at 11:14

1 Answers1

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SQL Server 2008 Express supports 4GB.

SQL Server 2008 R2 Express supports 10GB.

Don't forget that the size limit doesn't include the log files (link for SQL Express 2005, but I couldn't find similar for SQL Express 2008 R2 and I don't think this fact has changed). It also doesn't include FILESTREAM data either, which is nice. There are a few useful comments about this here.

This SQL Server Blog entry announced the size increase.

Tom Chantler
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  • from this site: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/editions-compare.aspx what I see is 10GB file size, can you explain more? thanks – foo0110 Jun 30 '11 at 02:16
  • If you click on the Scalability and Performance bit it does indeed say 10GB. They also say they are speaking about `SQL Server 2008` and don't explicitly explain that it only refers to `SQL Server 2008 R2`. However, I have managed to find a link to the SQL Server Express blog entry that first mentioned the size increase. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlexpress/archive/2010/04/21/database-size-limit-increased-to-10gb-in-sql-server-2008-r2-express.aspx – Tom Chantler Jun 30 '11 at 07:57
  • Great, I think Microsoft give us wrong info on its SQL Server 2008 page. – foo0110 Jul 01 '11 at 01:35