Repair and recover .PST files with PST2GB

By Serdar Yegulalp 07 Mar 2005 | SearchExchange.com

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In Outlook, the storage limit for a single user's .PST file (the file used as Outlook's message database) is 2 GB. If a .PST file grows to over 2 GB, it can become damaged and some mail items may be lost.

Users of Office XP Service Pack 1 and higher will simply get errors and not be able to add or receive new mail items. (The error usually states that one should permanently delete items to reduce the amount of data in the file, but it is probably better to archive older items to a separate .PST file rather than delete them outright.) Users of earlier versions of Outlook will get no warning, however, and the file will be damaged.

If you're forced to use .PST files (for instance, in a remote scenario) and run into this problem, or have older .PST files over the 2 GB boundary that need to be recovered, one solution is to use a Microsoft utility called PST2GB.

This tool uses a fairly radical approach to "repairing" such a file: it forcibly truncates the file at the 2 GB boundary (actually, slightly below it) and makes it readable again. Unfortunately, this means that everything after the truncation will be lost. If you can suffer the loss of the data at the end of the file (which tends to be spurious), you can use this to restore the file to working order and extract the messages within.

Note that in order for PST2GB to work, you must have at least 2 GB free space on the drive itself. It is also probably a good idea to work on backup copies, not originals, since the resulting file will be truncated; if you come across another way of retrieving the rest of the messages, it would be good to have them available in some form.

About the author: Serdar Yegulalp is editor of the Windows 2000 Power Users Newsletter and a regular contributor to SearchExchange.com.

I believe the 2 GB limit only applies to Outlook 2002 and earlier. Outlook 2003 has a 20 GB limit. I don't see that mentioned in the article. Thanks.
—Bruce H.

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Outlook 2003 supports two types of .PST file formats:

• New native format (supports multilingual Unicode data): This format is not subject to the 2 GB limitation, but it is not compatible with pre-Outlook 2003 versions.

• Legacy format: This format is still subject to the 2 GB limitation, but it is compatible with pre-Outlook 2003 versions.

If you are running Outlook 2003 and want to work around the 2 GB .PST limitation, create a new .PST file in the new format and copy over data from the legacy .PST file. Note that the new .PST file can only be attached to Outlook 2003 and newer profiles.
—Flavius M.

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As long as you're not attempting to access newer .PSTs with older versions of Outlook, you can work around the limitations as described (by creating a new Unicode-compatible .PST and copying the information over).
—Serdar Yegulalp, tip author

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I have to continually remind my users that if they insist on having their .PST files locally, they need to remember to put a backup copy on the network share (as local drives are not backed up).

To help, I came up with a simple batch script to copy from local to network (only if the local copy is more recent than the network copy):

xcopy .pst /d /v /c /f /r /k /z /y

If they do not do this and their laptops are lost or broken, their old mail is gone for good.
—Brian C.

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The big problem with large .PST files (say 10 GB) is that if the user just deletes one stinking message, you get it on your incremental backup. We probably have 300 GB in .PSTs for every incremental backup.
—Don H.

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