Causes of large and archive PST file corruption and tips to avoid it
Personal storage table commonly known as PST is the filename extension used by Microsoft office outlook to store data. Email from Microsoft exchange mailbox, calendar items, tasks and notes etc are all stored in this particular file. This simplifies management of personal data and information. Though for its simple use there associates problem of PST file corruption. Although problem of large PST file corruption is directly related to outlook 2002 and its lower editions, outlook 2003 and 2007 are also not fully untouched by its influence.
Corrupt PST files may result from one of the following
- Influence of virus or other bugs present in the system
- Improper shutdown of application
- Exceeding file size limitation
- Compacting PST files
- Removal or corruption of Control data extensions
One of the ways, for avoiding valuable PST file data from being lost is archiving the PST file, which ensures complete prevention of PST file corruption due to inbuilt file size issue. With the help of archive function, the file is split and the emails divided into number of files as per requirement. Also this increases the utility for differentiating emails category wise.
But, again you may end up with archive pst file corruption which is devastating leading to loss of most importantly preserved emails. Primarily, because situation like infection by virus, malfunctioning application and others can affect archive.pst file as well, as this is also saved in the system only. As an indication for PST file corrupt error messages are shown while processing the file, most common of which is
“The file drive_letter:archive.pst is not a personal folders file”.
For these reasons it is always advisable to have an updated backup of important file data, besides that you are required to frequently split PST files for preventing it from being corrupted. Improvement in speed and efficiency are significant advantage of trimming the files as it grows large. Ever again if such a situation is faced the files have to be repaired and its data restored.
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