tikz picture not compiling using tikzexternalize - probably storage issue

Question

I'm using tikzexternalize for most pictures in a very big document, which works fine. But for the image

\tikzsetnextfilename{someName}
\begin{tikzpicture} 
\begin{groupplot}[
group style={columns=2, rows=1 ,vertical sep=0cm}, 
view={0}{-90}, 
xtick=\empty, 
ytick=\empty,
]
\nextgroupplot 
\addplot3[surf, shader=interp] table [row sep=newline] {fname1.dat};
\nextgroupplot 
\addplot3[surf, shader=interp] table [row sep=newline] {fname2.dat};
\end{groupplot}
\end{tikzpicture}

no file is created. If I choose to disable externalization via \tikzexternaldisable everything works fine.

The .dat files have 100x100 entries. With fewer entries (e.g. 30x30) externalization works properly.

Has anyone a suggestion how to solve this? By the way: I do not get any error or warning from the compiler.

Best, MA

PS: I forgot to mention: a colleague of mine has no issues using a Mac. I'm using a Windows Machine, with Miktex 2.9.

Answer 1

Well, here is the minimal example from my complete document including a link to the file I use. The crucial part is TikTexFile.tex - I don't get the .ps-file via externalization (that's how I posted the code). If I decomment the line \tikzexternaldisable everything works fine, since data is loaded directly. As I said, it is possible to build the Tikz picture standalone and include the PDF. This error appears using MikTex 2.9, Windows 7. Everything works fine with the Mac of a colleague. Thanks for your time!

Test.tex

\documentclass[12pt,open=left]{scrbook}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\usetikzlibrary{pgfplots.groupplots}
\usetikzlibrary{datavisualization}
\usetikzlibrary{datavisualization.formats.functions}
\usepgfplotslibrary{groupplots}


\usepgfplotslibrary{external} 
\tikzexternalize[shell escape={--enable-write18}, system call={latex    \tikzexternalcheckshellescape -halt-on-error -interaction=batchmode -jobname "\image" "\texsource" & dvips -o "\image".ps "\image".dvi & ps2pdf "\image".ps "\image".pdf}
]


\begin{document}

\begin{figure}[!ht]
\centering
\input{TikzTexFile}
\end{figure}
\end{document}

TikTexFile.tex

%\tikzexternaldisable
\tikzsetnextfilename{TikzFilePDF}
\begin{tikzpicture} [scale = 0.2]
\begin{groupplot}[
group style={columns=5, rows=1 ,vertical sep=0cm}, 
view={0}{-90}, 
xtick=\empty, 
ytick=\empty,
]

\nextgroupplot 
\addplot3[surf, shader=interp] table [row sep=newline] {fn.dat};
\nextgroupplot 
\addplot3[surf, shader=interp] table [row sep=newline] {fn.dat};
\end{groupplot}
\end{tikzpicture}
%\tikzexternalenable

Link to file: fn.dat