Can I make Outlook span 2 hard disks with my mail folder?

[mariner]

I guess this is the forum to ask this in. I have a large Outlook mail folder at work. It's over 300MB. The administrator tells me it's too large for the common drive and I got to move it. If I get 2 of those good looking WD 250GB drives can I make Outlook span the 2 drives with my mail folder? Make it appear as though they are 1 drive?

mariner

 

[mariner]

No help here?

 

[jbritt1234]

Jeez!!! 300 Megs! That?s pretty good!

I got 1 question though. The PST file is 300 Megabytes right? Well that?s less than a third of a Gigabyte. So you can fit that easily in a 250 gig drive. If you got 2 of em, you could fit roughly 1700 copies of that .pst file on those drives.

So, I guess I?m not really understanding why you wanna span drives with that.

Am I misunderstanding? Or is it just time for a vacation???

If you are wanting to connect the 2 drives, Easiest way I can think of would be getting a RAID card and setting it to RAID 0 (striping) That would make windows see the 2 drives as one, and you would keep all the storage space.

 

[mariner]

Point taken, jbritt. Not sure what I was missing there. According to my daughter I'm still living in the 80's (with that 640KB BG said we could live with) so maybe that's it (Is absentmindedness reason enuf to ban one from the community (see sig) :confused

As for spanning drives, I like the RAID idea. Thanks.

mariner

 

[zetter]

Another thing to remember is that a PST file cannot exceed 2Gb in size.

 

[lobadobadingdong]

Originally posted by: zetter
Another thing to remember is that a PST file cannot exceed 2Gb in size.

just make a local archive .pst file and it will pull it off of the server to make the admin happy, If you really need to save it permimaninment burn a copy to a cd-r for postarity.

 

[tennesota]

300MB is generous for Mailbox size compared to the rules of my employer. I agree with lobadobadingdong's suggestion, create a .pst(Personal Folders) file on the c:\drive of your workstation, move the messages from the Outlook server to the newly created .pst file.

 

[mariner]

Thanks all. I created a .pst file on my local machine. That was not a very good solution in my case as it removes all my mail archives from availability when I'm not in my office. And if my hard disk crashes I could be in trouble; regular CD or DVD back-ups will be in order. However, moving my .pst file seems to be the best solution at this time.

mariner

 

[tennesota]

How do you see email when you are not in the office? Do you have another machine to use such as a laptop or a home based workstation?

A good portable solution for backing up large .pst files is Iomega's 750MB USB 2.0 External Drive, you don't have to span disks and you can use it for a lot more than backing up email.

Do you have a home folder on a network server? Perhaps you can backup your email there too.

 

[mariner]

tennesota,

Until now I had been keeping my all mail on an agency mail server. I could log onto web-Outlook and check my inbox and access all my folders. After I move my folders (except the Inbox) to my workstation, I will only have access to my Inbox which I will leave on the server so I will at least have access to new mail whn on the road.

I inquired of the Admin if it was possible for me to purchase a hard disk from my operating budget and just give it to them (their budget is limited) to make more room on the mail server. Their problem is that they have no more physical room for another hard disk (at least that is what I'm told). I found that strange for a state agency that has an annual operating budget of several million dollars.

Does anyone know how much it would cost to buy the minimal materials to add another box to a mail server daisy chain? Currently we have 5 mail servers.

mariner