Restore-SPSite failure due to insufficient Content Database Space

Question

I hope someone can help me solve this weird problem I'm facing for 4 days.

I'm trying to restore the backup of Sharepoint 2010 web application. I'm using Windows Powershell command :

Restore-SPSite -identity http://servername:7070 - path D:\moss7070\moss7070.bak -force. 

I've created an empty web application before I run the command. The command runs for around one hour to two hours before it shows this error:

Restore-SPSite : The site collection could not be restored. If this problem persists, please make sure the content databases are available and have sufficient free space.
At line:1 char:15 + restore-spsite <<<< -identity -path <.bak> -verbose -force + CategoryInfo : InvalidData: (Microsoft.Share...dletRestoreSite:SPCmdletRestoreSite) [Restore-SPSite], SPException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell.SPCmdletRestoreSite

The bak file is around 37 GB and I have 1.6 TERABYTE free space on the disk drive. I'm using SQL SERVER 2008 R2 Evaluation Version (full, not the express version). Database & SharePoint Users have full administration permissions.

What am I doing wrong?!

Answer 1

The problem was ridiculous. Apparently the backup file had some unknown issue. I can't figure it out but maybe the backup process was wrong. I tried restoring a different site collection that has larger size than the old one and it worked fine. The restore tool was showing the wrong error. Rob was right when he said the error could be pointing to something else.

So always make sure you have enough free disk space and make sure the backup file is clean.

Answer 2

Don't be fooled by the "have sufficient free space" message...I think that's just part of a higher level generic error message.

I had this same exact error about a month ago and the only way I was able to get around it was going into Central Admin, create a new content database on the web app, and then use the databasename argument on the Restore-SPSite command.

Restore-SPSite -identity http://servername:7070 - path D:\moss7070\moss7070.bak -databasename NewContentDbName

I'd also drop the -force argument...you shouldn't need it if your're restoring to a blank web app without any existing site collections.

Answer 3

I got this error restoring to my VM. The quote from the reference below worked too, but for my environment since its a dev, i just deleted the web app, recreated the site collections and ran my restore-spsite command with force and verbose options and it worked fine.

"I had previously deleted the site collection using Central Administration, and in this case I was trying to copy the site collection between virtual machines.

Deleting the site collection in Central Administration used the gradual delete method which left the site collection GUIDs behind in the content database, which caused the restore to fail.

To resolve this I manually ran the Gradual Site Delete timerjob, after this finished I was then able to restore the site collection normally."

Reference

Answer 4

If the sql account does not have sysadmin privilege then also this issue is encountered

Answer 5

All you need to do is to just run these commands:

1) This will delete all site collections one by one from Sharepoint Recycle bin

Get-SPDeletedSite -webapplication "http://RootSiteCollection" | Remove-SPDeletedSite.

This will prompt you before deleting each site collection from sharepont recycle bin

2) This will remove the orphaned enteries from content database

Open Sharepoint management Powershell and run this

$db = Get-SPDatabase "Content_DB_Name";

$db.Repair($true);

$db.Update(); 

Cheers,

Manvir