I am using a Microft SQL Express edition server limited to 10GB/database. The original database runs on a licenced server and it is ~15GB. I was given a small part of this database (last couple years of data) which should be well below 10GB. The .bak file is 6GB, I am assuming the DB itself is ~2.5-3GB. When I try to restore from the backup the MSSQL Management studio clearly sees that the .bak file is 6GB but still it says "Restore failed, resulting database would exceed you limit of 10GB/database".
Any ideas what is happening? I am confused.
My "minimal" .bak file resulted from cutting down (DELETE a few years of data) a copy of the original database.