Importing using up disk space - but where????

[DB_Noob]

Does anybody have any insight:

I'm running an import of some Excel files into my FM database. I started getting errors that space was low. I thought, because I'm accessing the database via a network connection to a different server, it was the server machine that was running low. Not the case.

I looked at the computer I am actually running the database on and I noted the disk space left: 1.2GB.

I ran the import again (and this import will delete the existing information in the table so I'm not making the table bigger) and I ended up at 1.17GBs left.

Does anybody have any idea where the space is being used up when I run the import scripts??

[marlys]

My first guess would be that the space is going to virtual memory -- 1.2GB to 1.17 isn't all that much of a difference (30MB), which could be consumed by the system or by Filemaker in their normal functioning.

If your entire system is down to about 1GB of total hard drive space free, it wouldn't surprise me to get "low disk space" error messages either. FMP10 on my machine (importing a 250MB text file at this moment) is using up 1.6GB of memory, 1.2GB of which is virtual memory. With hard drives costing in the neighborhood of 10 cents / GB, I guess Filemaker's programmers assume you'll have more than a gig or two available at any given time.