How to repair corrupt PST's

[Connoisseur]

Hey guys. working on a project but I need to repair a PST file that's 1.99GB size. I heard that PST's get corrupt once they hit 2GB. Could this be the problem? I ran scanpst on it but it's still corrupt. are there any programs out there that can repair this problem WITHOUT deleting any of the data?

 

[imported_michealo]

maximum capacity for outlook 2000 pst's is 2GB, that is definately your problem

have never seen a way to repair them without losing some data

 

[AdamSnow]

The corruption level for an Outlook PST can vary. I've seen it at 1.1gb to 2.5gb... all depends on when it fails.

Your Windows 2000/XP box should come with an Outlook repair tool. You can find this here :

C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\MSMAPI\1033\Scanpst.exe

Run that on the problem PST - get it repaired and quickly transfer that data into separate PST files to lower the size. you may lose some - but at this point you are out of options.

I would also not recommend doing this over a network connection. If it is on a network share, transfer to your local system before running the scan. Make sure you re-map outlook to use the one on the local drive (the fixed one) next time you load to make sure you can get the data out.

If you need more help with this issue - feel free to send me a PM... but try to keep it on the boards to help other people who may need this info.

 

[skace]

ScanPST works by rebuilding the file with what is left of it. So yes, you will lose some, hence the corruption. This is why PST files make terrible file storage.

 

[Connoisseur]

thx fixed the problem. we were trying to repair it on the data storage server and apparently the drive was running out of space even though it should've had plenty to run scanpst. we copied the pst to the local computers which had more space and ran Mail Recovery. Thx for teh help guys

 

[KLin]

Originally posted by: Connoisseur
thx fixed the problem. we were trying to repair it on the data storage server and apparently the drive was running out of space even though it should've had plenty to run scanpst. we copied the pst to the local computers which had more space and ran Mail Recovery. Thx for teh help guys

Definitely always run scanPST from the local hard drive.

 

[Connoisseur]

Originally posted by: KLin

Originally posted by: Connoisseur
thx fixed the problem. we were trying to repair it on the data storage server and apparently the drive was running out of space even though it should've had plenty to run scanpst. we copied the pst to the local computers which had more space and ran Mail Recovery. Thx for teh help guys

Definitely always run scanPST from the local hard drive.

we ran scanpst from the server hd. we were accessing it through remote desktop.

 

[Snapster]

As a last resort, if you have a decent hex editor you can chop a few 100 MB off a copy of the pst, and chop a different 100MB from another copy, delete the stuff you don't need and combine them.