Cannot Obliterate deleted files Ver 3.5

[Sourav]

Hi,

I am trying to obliterate some of the deleted files and the vault admin shows the following error message

Unable to Obliterate item: <filename>

All branches of an item must be obliterated before the item itself can be obliterated. It is possible that some of the branched items have beem deleted, but not obliterated. You must obliterate branches before you can obliterate this item. This items has branches at:

<No branch path is specified in the message>

I searched the forum and found one solution that says that I need to undelete the item and check the history. I was unable to that since we deleted the folder and added a new folder with the same name. So when I try to undelete it throws an error message saying that the file already exists (which make sense).

I have a lot of files that I can obliterate but they throw the same error message. The reason we are trying to obliterate the files is to shrink the database size which is now little over 40 GB and vault is slowing down.

Now will obliterating files and then performing a DB Shrink reduce the physical size of the database? If so then is there any workaround for the error I am getting while trying to obliterate files so I can reduce the size of the database?

Note: we do perform database maintenance at a regular basis.

Thanks
Sourav.

[Beth]

You had the right idea with what you were doing. So it looks like the new folder is the only thing from preventing you from continuing down that route. First, you will want to have your users check in anything they have out from the new folder. Then you can either Get a copy of the folder or or you can use the import/export tool to export that folder out to a file. After that you'd remove it from Vault, then perform the undeletes and continue with what you need to do to get to the final obliterate. When you are finished you will be able to add it back in.

For more information on the Vault database performance you may wish to check out a few KB articles:
Vault Database Maintenance: http://support.sourcegear.com/viewtopic.php?t=2924
Vault Performance: http://support.sourcegear.com/viewtopic.php?t=4206