I am searching for an explanation of a replication snapshot being in excess of 5 times what we're predicting

Following a replication failure we are attempting to reinitialise subscriptions with a new snapshot. The size of the database is 135GB, one table within the database is 60GB - we have excluded this article from the publication. This meant we had an expectation of snapshot size being ~75GB.

We've had several attempts at creating the snapshot and these have failed due to lack of disk space. Last night the snapshot filled a disk with 340GB of free space.

I 'd welcome any explanation for this huge size of snapshot.

In my examination of possible causes I note that the snapshot format is set to "Character - Required if a publisher or subscriber is not running SQL Server". This despite the fact that at both ends of this transnational replication is native SQL Server. Is there a different in size between formats?

Thanks in advance.

```
Native mode file Size:105 MB
C:>bcp IVM_ArchiveTest.dbo.Event out D:\NOBACKUP\UseOnce\EventNative.dat -T -n 
218977 rows copied. Network packet size (bytes): 4096 Clock Time (ms.) 
Total : 7878 Average : (27796.01 rows per sec.) 

Character mode file Size:66 MB 
C:\>bcp IVM_ArchiveTest.dbo.Event out D:\NOBACKUP\UseOnce\EventChar.dat -T -c 
218977 rows copied. Network packet size (bytes): 4096 Clock Time (ms.) 
Total : 1654 Average : (132392.38 rows per sec.) 

```