#2 convert large msp file

[Daniel Mulholland]

Hi, I'm trying to convert a 2GB MSP to MGF but I keep getting an out of memory error. I have 64GB RAM. How much RAM would I need for this do you think?

Alternatively is there a way to split the original MSP into 2x1GB MSPs, convert them to MGFs, then recombine into a 2GB MGF again? That should make the conversion easier on my PC

[clochardM33]

Crickey. A 2Gb MSP! That's quite a bit larger than anything I ever considered.
You are correct in your thinking that more RAM is probably the wrong way to do it and splitting into smaller chunks is probably the right way to do it.
Give me a bit of time to have a think about it.

[clochardM33]

Splitting the input is the fastest and easiest way. I don't have bandwidth to change the code to do it programatically, even though that would be the nicest way to do it.

If you are not already using Notepad++ (or something similar) then download it and use this to edit the file.
https://notepad-plus-plus.org/

1. Make a copy of the initial msp file (in case you mess up!).
2. Open it in the your favourite text editor that isn't Word (it has to be a text format file and Word just messes it up).
3. Grab as much of the text as you want, making sure you pickup the blank line between the blocks.
4. Copy this into a new text file.
5. Save the new text file with a new name and extension .msp (You can alternatively save it as .txt and change it in File Manager later).
6. Delete the selected text from the starting file.
7. Repeat 3 to 6 until you have split it into an arbitrary number of chunks.

MSP2MGF supports multiple file drag and drop
Drag all the new files (the split ones) onto MSP2MGF and see what happens.

If you want to be a little more scientific then use Task Manager to monitor the RAM usage of MSP2MGF and process just one of the split files. This will give you a rough idea of how KB of file size relates to MB of RAM.
From this you can estimate approximately how big in KB a file can be before it consumes all the RAM you have available.