PST File Size Limit
To understand how to repair a corrupt .pst file we first need to understand a bit about them. Depending on who you ask, PST is short for "Personal Storage Table" or "Personal Folders File" (Microsoft seems to prefer the latter). When you check your email in Outlook, it retrieves email messages from the email server and stores them in its local PST file. The more email you receive, the bigger your PST file gets. The same goes for contact records, tasks, calendar events, etc. - the more you create, the bigger your file becomes.
Older versions of Outlook (Outlook 97, Outlook 98, Outlook 2000, Outlook 2002) can't handle a PST file that gets bigger than 2GB in size. Once your .pst file gets that large you're in trouble as Outlook can no longer open the file and will act as if it is corrupted.Starting with Outlook 2003, PST files have a maximum size determined by the user, with a recommended upper limit of 20GB. And that's a good thing as the amount of email users receive and retain continues to go up. Unfortunately, file size limits are only one of the problems effecting the PST file used by Outlook.
PST File Corruption Errors
Because Outlook's PST file gets used quite heavily, it is vulnerable to corruption whenever anything gets written to it incorrectly or incompletely. So if Outlook crashes or shuts down incompletely or gets interrupted, or if you lose power or your computer gets shut down improperly, or if a buggy application crashes your system, your Outlook PST file might get left in an improper (i.e., corrupted) state. Outlook will report an error and will refuse to open the corrupt .pst file.
Some common errors are:
- Error 0x80040116
- Error 0x80040119
- Error 0x80040600
- Fatal Error: 80040900
- Outlook.pst is not a personal folders file
- Outlook.pst could not be found
- Outlook.pst could not be opened
- Outlook.pst can not be accessed - 0x80040116
- Outlook.pst has reached its maximum size
- [FileName].pst file could not be opened. The file may not be compatible with this version of Outlook or it may be corrupted.
- OUTLOOK caused an invalid page fault in module OUTLLIB.DLL at [memory address]
- File path\filename.pst could not be accessed. Data error. Cyclic redundancy check.
- Unable to display the folder, Outlook.pst could not be accessed, access denied.
- The file [drive]:\[path][file name].pst could not be found.
If you encounter any of these errors, you need to fix any file corruption in order to restore your .pst file to a valid state. Microsoft has a free tool, scanpst.exe, that can fix minor corruption problems, but often fails on more extreme cases. Before you use scanpst (also known as the Inbox Repair Tool), you'll want to understand the basic process for using it, which appears below.
Scanpst.exe Use And Limitations
Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't make it easy to find scanpst.exe, and its location varies across operating systems (XP vs. Vista, for example) and across versions of Outlook (Outlook 2000 vs. Outlook 2007, for example). So be sure you know how to locate files on your computer (or get the help of someone who does).
Once you know how to find the necessary files, follow these steps:
- Exit from Outlook and stay out of it until all steps are completed.
- Locate all .pst files on your computer (search for *.pst).
- Make backup copies of all of your .pst files.
- Locate scanpst.exe on your computer and run it.
- Scanpst will ask for the location of your .pst file(s).
- Click the "Start" button to scan the file for errors.
- Scanpst will then report the results of its scan.
- Select the option to make a backup of the scanned file before repairing it.
- Click the "Repair" button to attempt to repair the file.
If the Inbox Repair Tool was able to successfully scan and repair your Outlook.pst file then consider yourself lucky. Quite often this utility will fail to correct the problem. If you search the Internet you will find lots of users complaining that scanpst did not work, and wondering what else they can do. Because scanpst is the only tool Microsoft provides, if it can't fix your corrupt .pst files then you'll have to look elsewhere.In addition to that, the Inbox Repair Tool does not solve the problem of a .pst file being corrupt when it exceeds the file size limits for PST files. For example, versions of Outlook prior to Outlook 2003 cannot open a .pst file that has grown bigger that 2 gigabytes (GB) in size.
When you have a 2GB pst problem, Microsoft recommends its PST Crop Tool. However, this tool simply chops off part of your file and places a new header on it. The result is that you will end up losing data, and you'll have no easy way to tell what you've lost. Because of that, we do not recommend the Microsoft crop tool. Instead, we recommend pst repair software that will allow you to intelligently split an oversized .pst file into two or more smaller files so that you won't lose any valuable data.
Third Party Outlook PST Repair
If scanpst.exe was not able to recovery the data from your corrupt .pst file, or if the file is larger than 2GB and you want to split it intelligently, you'll need to step up to a more powerful repair tool, such as our Outlook PST Repair . With this tool, the pst repair process is simple - you just scan your old pst file and rebuild a new one, minus the errors that caused the original problem. Of course, no tool can guarantee to fix all the damage done to a corrupt file, and our Outlook PST tool is no exception. However, it is much more robust than most and also lets you try it before you buy it. So when scanpst.exe fails, give our Outlook PST Repair a try.
PST Repair Download for Free
Outlook PST Repair scans all of your damaged .pst files, then extracts and restores them into new, fully usable .pst files - enabling complete and total recovery of all your important information. Fast! Easy! Fixed!
Fix Corrupt PST Files In 3 Easy Steps:
No comments:
Post a Comment