Hi, i need to put a solution in place which is going to reduce the size of
mailboxes in the info store. The reason why is it's taking an eternity to
back up all of the mailboxes / info store etc. Reading up on the
autoarchive, i see m/soft suggest it is deployed using the users home drive
as the location for the pst. However...am i correct in thinking that pst's
when they go over a certain size are unable to be fully recovered??

Looking at the size of mailbox my current selection of users have, it will
also mean a lot of drive space used up.

I would be grateful if anyone has any easy win solutions that they post them
please. Easy win meaing without any additional servers / applications to
archive messages.

TIA

pst's for Outlook 2003 and above have a limit of 20 gig. Older than 2003
it's 2 gig.
What mailbox sizes are we talking about?

"Fred" wrote:

> Hi, i need to put a solution in place which is going to reduce the size of
> mailboxes in the info store. The reason why is it's taking an eternity to
> back up all of the mailboxes / info store etc. Reading up on the
> autoarchive, i see m/soft suggest it is deployed using the users home drive
> as the location for the pst. However...am i correct in thinking that pst's
> when they go over a certain size are unable to be fully recovered??
>
> Looking at the size of mailbox my current selection of users have, it will
> also mean a lot of drive space used up.
>
> I would be grateful if anyone has any easy win solutions that they post them
> please. Easy win meaing without any additional servers / applications to
> archive messages.
>
> TIA
>
>
>

Easy win solution would be to clean out the mailboxes and set a manageable
quota on them so they can't grow too large anymore.

If you redirect the user's home drive to a network share you should not
point pst-files to them as connecting to pst-files on a network share is a
unsupported configuration.

Note that the Exchange message store is much more efficient in storing data
than a pst-file so if you use pst-files you would require more free MBs on
your servers and backup systems.

A long term solution that will enable you to safe each and every email would
be to implement a server side archiving solution. These systems will take
the emails out of the active database of the Exchange server and into a
separate database so there is no need to create a daily backup for it. Most
of these systems are transparent to the end user so there is no change if
how they retrieve the email.

--
Robert Sparnaaij [MVP-Outlook]
Coauthor, Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003
http://www.howto-outlook.com/
Outlook FAQ, HowTo, Downloads, Add-Ins and more

-----

"Fred" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Hi, i need to put a solution in place which is going to reduce the size of
> mailboxes in the info store. The reason why is it's taking an eternity to
> back up all of the mailboxes / info store etc. Reading up on the
> autoarchive, i see m/soft suggest it is deployed using the users home
> drive as the location for the pst. However...am i correct in thinking that
> pst's when they go over a certain size are unable to be fully recovered??
>
> Looking at the size of mailbox my current selection of users have, it will
> also mean a lot of drive space used up.
>
> I would be grateful if anyone has any easy win solutions that they post
> them please. Easy win meaing without any additional servers / applications
> to archive messages.
>
> TIA
>

Thanks for the replies guys,
I didn't realise that the pst limit had increased, but i'm glad it has!

What i'm thinking of doing following this is, updating clients to outlook
2003 from 2000, setting up autoarchiving to point at their own network
share.

I take note about the size of pst's and also that exchange doesd handle the
mailbox data better, but in this case the priority is getting the backup
window back to being just out of hours and not rolling into the working day,
as it currently is. Also the pst's on the network drive will be backed up by
a different server, to the one which backs up the mailserver, so this will
help matters too.

Thanks for your help

Ideally i would like to deploy a archive solution on a suitable server, i
seethat GFI produce a suitable application. However at this time it is over
and above what i need.




"Roady [MVP]" <newsgroups_DELETE_@_DELETE_sparnaaij_NO_._SPAM_net> wrote in
message news:3A9C4220-32B3-4528-B65D-(E-Mail Removed)...
> Easy win solution would be to clean out the mailboxes and set a manageable
> quota on them so they can't grow too large anymore.
>
> If you redirect the user's home drive to a network share you should not
> point pst-files to them as connecting to pst-files on a network share is a
> unsupported configuration.
>
> Note that the Exchange message store is much more efficient in storing
> data than a pst-file so if you use pst-files you would require more free
> MBs on your servers and backup systems.
>
> A long term solution that will enable you to safe each and every email
> would be to implement a server side archiving solution. These systems will
> take the emails out of the active database of the Exchange server and into
> a separate database so there is no need to create a daily backup for it.
> Most of these systems are transparent to the end user so there is no
> change if how they retrieve the email.
>
> --
> Robert Sparnaaij [MVP-Outlook]
> Coauthor, Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003
> http://www.howto-outlook.com/
> Outlook FAQ, HowTo, Downloads, Add-Ins and more
>
> -----
>
> "Fred" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>> Hi, i need to put a solution in place which is going to reduce the size
>> of mailboxes in the info store. The reason why is it's taking an eternity
>> to back up all of the mailboxes / info store etc. Reading up on the
>> autoarchive, i see m/soft suggest it is deployed using the users home
>> drive as the location for the pst. However...am i correct in thinking
>> that pst's when they go over a certain size are unable to be fully
>> recovered??
>>
>> Looking at the size of mailbox my current selection of users have, it
>> will also mean a lot of drive space used up.
>>
>> I would be grateful if anyone has any easy win solutions that they post
>> them please. Easy win meaing without any additional servers /
>> applications to archive messages.
>>
>> TIA
>>

>>>setting up autoarchiving to point at their own network share.

As I said; this is not recommended and an unsupported configuration by
Microsoft. Configuring it like this could result in data corruption or even
data loss. Always keep the pst-file on a local harddrive. You can use the
pst-backup addin from Microsoft to easily copy pst-files to a network
location when you close Outlook.

--
Robert Sparnaaij [MVP-Outlook]
Coauthor, Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003
http://www.howto-outlook.com/
Outlook FAQ, HowTo, Downloads, Add-Ins and more

-----

"Fred" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Thanks for the replies guys,
> I didn't realise that the pst limit had increased, but i'm glad it has!
>
> What i'm thinking of doing following this is, updating clients to outlook
> 2003 from 2000, setting up autoarchiving to point at their own network
> share.
>
> I take note about the size of pst's and also that exchange doesd handle
> the mailbox data better, but in this case the priority is getting the
> backup window back to being just out of hours and not rolling into the
> working day, as it currently is. Also the pst's on the network drive will
> be backed up by a different server, to the one which backs up the
> mailserver, so this will help matters too.
>
> Thanks for your help
>
> Ideally i would like to deploy a archive solution on a suitable server, i
> seethat GFI produce a suitable application. However at this time it is
> over and above what i need.
>
>
>
>
> "Roady [MVP]" <newsgroups_DELETE_@_DELETE_sparnaaij_NO_._SPAM_net> wrote
> in message news:3A9C4220-32B3-4528-B65D-(E-Mail Removed)...
>> Easy win solution would be to clean out the mailboxes and set a
>> manageable quota on them so they can't grow too large anymore.
>>
>> If you redirect the user's home drive to a network share you should not
>> point pst-files to them as connecting to pst-files on a network share is
>> a unsupported configuration.
>>
>> Note that the Exchange message store is much more efficient in storing
>> data than a pst-file so if you use pst-files you would require more free
>> MBs on your servers and backup systems.
>>
>> A long term solution that will enable you to safe each and every email
>> would be to implement a server side archiving solution. These systems
>> will take the emails out of the active database of the Exchange server
>> and into a separate database so there is no need to create a daily backup
>> for it. Most of these systems are transparent to the end user so there is
>> no change if how they retrieve the email.
>>
>> --
>> Robert Sparnaaij [MVP-Outlook]
>> Coauthor, Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003
>> http://www.howto-outlook.com/
>> Outlook FAQ, HowTo, Downloads, Add-Ins and more
>>
>> -----
>>
>> "Fred" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
>> news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>>> Hi, i need to put a solution in place which is going to reduce the size
>>> of mailboxes in the info store. The reason why is it's taking an
>>> eternity to back up all of the mailboxes / info store etc. Reading up
>>> on the autoarchive, i see m/soft suggest it is deployed using the users
>>> home drive as the location for the pst. However...am i correct in
>>> thinking that pst's when they go over a certain size are unable to be
>>> fully recovered??
>>>
>>> Looking at the size of mailbox my current selection of users have, it
>>> will also mean a lot of drive space used up.
>>>
>>> I would be grateful if anyone has any easy win solutions that they post
>>> them please. Easy win meaing without any additional servers /
>>> applications to archive messages.
>>>
>>> TIA
>>>
>
>

Ok, but surely a solution where the pst is backup to tape / NAS etc, is
better than a pc's HDD?


"Roady [MVP]" <newsgroups_DELETE_@_DELETE_sparnaaij_NO_._SPAM_net> wrote in
message news:80E54F61-0210-4895-8A93-(E-Mail Removed)...
>>>>setting up autoarchiving to point at their own network share.
>
> As I said; this is not recommended and an unsupported configuration by
> Microsoft. Configuring it like this could result in data corruption or
> even data loss. Always keep the pst-file on a local harddrive. You can use
> the pst-backup addin from Microsoft to easily copy pst-files to a network
> location when you close Outlook.
>
> --
> Robert Sparnaaij [MVP-Outlook]
> Coauthor, Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003
> http://www.howto-outlook.com/
> Outlook FAQ, HowTo, Downloads, Add-Ins and more
>
> -----
>
> "Fred" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>> Thanks for the replies guys,
>> I didn't realise that the pst limit had increased, but i'm glad it has!
>>
>> What i'm thinking of doing following this is, updating clients to outlook
>> 2003 from 2000, setting up autoarchiving to point at their own network
>> share.
>>
>> I take note about the size of pst's and also that exchange doesd handle
>> the mailbox data better, but in this case the priority is getting the
>> backup window back to being just out of hours and not rolling into the
>> working day, as it currently is. Also the pst's on the network drive will
>> be backed up by a different server, to the one which backs up the
>> mailserver, so this will help matters too.
>>
>> Thanks for your help
>>
>> Ideally i would like to deploy a archive solution on a suitable server, i
>> seethat GFI produce a suitable application. However at this time it is
>> over and above what i need.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> "Roady [MVP]" <newsgroups_DELETE_@_DELETE_sparnaaij_NO_._SPAM_net> wrote
>> in message news:3A9C4220-32B3-4528-B65D-(E-Mail Removed)...
>>> Easy win solution would be to clean out the mailboxes and set a
>>> manageable quota on them so they can't grow too large anymore.
>>>
>>> If you redirect the user's home drive to a network share you should not
>>> point pst-files to them as connecting to pst-files on a network share is
>>> a unsupported configuration.
>>>
>>> Note that the Exchange message store is much more efficient in storing
>>> data than a pst-file so if you use pst-files you would require more free
>>> MBs on your servers and backup systems.
>>>
>>> A long term solution that will enable you to safe each and every email
>>> would be to implement a server side archiving solution. These systems
>>> will take the emails out of the active database of the Exchange server
>>> and into a separate database so there is no need to create a daily
>>> backup for it. Most of these systems are transparent to the end user so
>>> there is no change if how they retrieve the email.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Robert Sparnaaij [MVP-Outlook]
>>> Coauthor, Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003
>>> http://www.howto-outlook.com/
>>> Outlook FAQ, HowTo, Downloads, Add-Ins and more
>>>
>>> -----
>>>
>>> "Fred" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
>>> news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>>>> Hi, i need to put a solution in place which is going to reduce the size
>>>> of mailboxes in the info store. The reason why is it's taking an
>>>> eternity to back up all of the mailboxes / info store etc. Reading up
>>>> on the autoarchive, i see m/soft suggest it is deployed using the users
>>>> home drive as the location for the pst. However...am i correct in
>>>> thinking that pst's when they go over a certain size are unable to be
>>>> fully recovered??
>>>>
>>>> Looking at the size of mailbox my current selection of users have, it
>>>> will also mean a lot of drive space used up.
>>>>
>>>> I would be grateful if anyone has any easy win solutions that they post
>>>> them please. Easy win meaing without any additional servers /
>>>> applications to archive messages.
>>>>
>>>> TIA
>>>>
>>
>>

Not really; putting pst-files on a network share creates the risk that you
are backing up corrupt pst-files so then there is no need to back them up in
the first place.

Instead of using the backup add-in you can also create a logoff script that
copies the local pst-files to the network share on logoff. Make sure you
include a check that outlook.exe is actually closed before starting the copy
command and make it visible to your users that the copy is in progress so
that they don't turn off the computer by the on/off switch (because logoff
took so long) or they will corrupt the pst-file.

--
Robert Sparnaaij [MVP-Outlook]
Coauthor, Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003
http://www.howto-outlook.com/
Outlook FAQ, HowTo, Downloads, Add-Ins and more

-----

"Fred" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Ok, but surely a solution where the pst is backup to tape / NAS etc, is
> better than a pc's HDD?
>
>
> "Roady [MVP]" <newsgroups_DELETE_@_DELETE_sparnaaij_NO_._SPAM_net> wrote
> in message news:80E54F61-0210-4895-8A93-(E-Mail Removed)...
>>>>>setting up autoarchiving to point at their own network share.
>>
>> As I said; this is not recommended and an unsupported configuration by
>> Microsoft. Configuring it like this could result in data corruption or
>> even data loss. Always keep the pst-file on a local harddrive. You can
>> use the pst-backup addin from Microsoft to easily copy pst-files to a
>> network location when you close Outlook.
>>
>> --
>> Robert Sparnaaij [MVP-Outlook]
>> Coauthor, Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003
>> http://www.howto-outlook.com/
>> Outlook FAQ, HowTo, Downloads, Add-Ins and more
>>
>> -----
>>
>> "Fred" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
>> news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>>> Thanks for the replies guys,
>>> I didn't realise that the pst limit had increased, but i'm glad it has!
>>>
>>> What i'm thinking of doing following this is, updating clients to
>>> outlook 2003 from 2000, setting up autoarchiving to point at their own
>>> network share.
>>>
>>> I take note about the size of pst's and also that exchange doesd handle
>>> the mailbox data better, but in this case the priority is getting the
>>> backup window back to being just out of hours and not rolling into the
>>> working day, as it currently is. Also the pst's on the network drive
>>> will be backed up by a different server, to the one which backs up the
>>> mailserver, so this will help matters too.
>>>
>>> Thanks for your help
>>>
>>> Ideally i would like to deploy a archive solution on a suitable server,
>>> i seethat GFI produce a suitable application. However at this time it is
>>> over and above what i need.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> "Roady [MVP]" <newsgroups_DELETE_@_DELETE_sparnaaij_NO_._SPAM_net> wrote
>>> in message news:3A9C4220-32B3-4528-B65D-(E-Mail Removed)...
>>>> Easy win solution would be to clean out the mailboxes and set a
>>>> manageable quota on them so they can't grow too large anymore.
>>>>
>>>> If you redirect the user's home drive to a network share you should not
>>>> point pst-files to them as connecting to pst-files on a network share
>>>> is a unsupported configuration.
>>>>
>>>> Note that the Exchange message store is much more efficient in storing
>>>> data than a pst-file so if you use pst-files you would require more
>>>> free MBs on your servers and backup systems.
>>>>
>>>> A long term solution that will enable you to safe each and every email
>>>> would be to implement a server side archiving solution. These systems
>>>> will take the emails out of the active database of the Exchange server
>>>> and into a separate database so there is no need to create a daily
>>>> backup for it. Most of these systems are transparent to the end user so
>>>> there is no change if how they retrieve the email.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Robert Sparnaaij [MVP-Outlook]
>>>> Coauthor, Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003
>>>> http://www.howto-outlook.com/
>>>> Outlook FAQ, HowTo, Downloads, Add-Ins and more
>>>>
>>>> -----
>>>>
>>>> "Fred" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
>>>> news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>>>>> Hi, i need to put a solution in place which is going to reduce the
>>>>> size of mailboxes in the info store. The reason why is it's taking an
>>>>> eternity to back up all of the mailboxes / info store etc. Reading up
>>>>> on the autoarchive, i see m/soft suggest it is deployed using the
>>>>> users home drive as the location for the pst. However...am i correct
>>>>> in thinking that pst's when they go over a certain size are unable to
>>>>> be fully recovered??
>>>>>
>>>>> Looking at the size of mailbox my current selection of users have, it
>>>>> will also mean a lot of drive space used up.
>>>>>
>>>>> I would be grateful if anyone has any easy win solutions that they
>>>>> post them please. Easy win meaing without any additional servers /
>>>>> applications to archive messages.
>>>>>
>>>>> TIA
>>>>>
>>>
>>>
>
>