Cannot Uncompress Some Floppy Disks Without Removing Data (104544)



The information in this article applies to:
    Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 6.2
    Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 6.22

This article was previously published under Q104544

SYMPTOMS

This information applies to both Microsoft DoubleSpace and Microsoft DriveSpace. For MS-DOS 6.22, use DRVSPACE in place of DBLSPACE for commands and filenames.

If you compress a floppy disk and immediately try to uncompress the disk, you may receive the following error message:

DoubleSpace cannot uncompress drive <letter> because there is not enough space on drive <host letter> to hold all of the uncompressed files.

To uncompress drive <letter>, you must remove at least <xxx,xxx> bytes of files from either drive.

CAUSE

This occurs because DoubleSpace is very conservative in estimating the space required to hold the uncompressed files. The estimate is based in part on a worst-case scenario in which the data on the floppy disk is stored at a 16:1 compression ratio and DoubleSpace must convert the drive from a 16-bit file allocation table (FAT) to a 12-bit FAT.

RESOLUTION

To work around this problem, remove <xxx,xxx> bytes of data from either the compressed drive or the host drive.

Modification Type: Major Last Reviewed: 11/21/1999
Keywords: KB104544