"There is not enough space on the disk" error during file transfer

During the file transfer step of the conversion, the job fails with the following error:

There is not enough space on the disk

This issue is can occur if the volume or partition that is being migrated contains a compressed file or folder.

During the file transfer step, PowerConvert uses backup file streams to read and write data from source file to target file. When creating the new compressed file/folder on the target and writing to it - Windows will at first allocate the total uncompressed space on the disk (size of the file) and then will continuously compress the file as needed while the data is copied to the target file/folder (Windows will continue to compress it on the fly).

As a result, the limitation is that initially the uncompressed space will cause the amount of data being transferred to be larger than the actual size of the volume created for the target which in turn causes the "There is not enough space on the disk" error.

To resolve the issue, the recommended workaround is to create a target disk file (i.e. a .vmdk or .vhd file) for the target that will be large enough to compensate for the total size of the volume if the compressed file/folder was actually uncompressed.