Calculating database size

[mac_see]

I know 2 Gigs is the limit for Access.

If I have a database with one table and only one field of type "Text" with
every record having a string of 30 characters long, How many records can I
add so that the database size is under 2 Gigs?

Also can anyone explain how Access calculates a database size?

Maxi

 

[Andrew Fergus]

Hi Maxi
I presume this is related to your previous question regarding breaking up the csv field into it's 9 components. Intuitively I would think that you would almost double the size of the database by breaking up the csv value and storing it's separate components. But if you also doubled up on the csv value (like I proposed in the other thread) then you would triple the size of the database. It also depends on what else is in your database. You might want to run a compact and repair (under Tools -> Database Utilities) on the database before you run the queries. How big is the database now?
Andrew

[Late Edit] for data storage calculation purposes, 1 character = 1 byte but if your text field has a default size of 50 characters, then each record will have 50 bytes reserved x 200k records = 10m bytes = 9.5MB (1024 x 1024 bytes per MB) plus a bit for Access.