Knowledge Base

Attempting to restore data into a SQL Express database that exceeds limit

Category: Troubleshooting & error messages
Date: 11 Apr 2011
Product: SQL Backup
Unable to restore as the data in the backup file exceeds the licensed data limit of 4096MB

Microsoft SQL Express Edition databases have a maximum data size of 4096MB. User is attempting to restore data into a SQL Express database that exceeds this limit.

This is not a SQL Backup Error but a known limitation with SQL Server Express.

Consider carefully when deploying SQL Server 2005 / 2008 Express Edition since it has many limitations.

This article may help:

       "http://sqlserverperformance.wordpress.com/2007/11/02/what-happens-when-a-sql-server-2005-express-database-goes-over-4gb/"

If you do run into this limit, as advised in the above article, you can try an Index Reorganize on all of your indexes, and then try a database file shrink to give yourself some more room.

If the above does not help, you will need to restore the database on a machine running a licensed version of SQL Server 2005 / 2008 such as Workgroup or Standard editions.