About ost and pst files

[mohit]

Hello,

Just wanted to know a bit about ost and past files and their
relationship:

Assumptions:
1. a mail from my exchange inbox is downloaded to my machine in my ost
file
2. From the ost it is moved to my pst by user action or a rule
3. The ost is a sequential store and needs to be compacted to remove
deleted items?

If the above is correct then IF i haven't compacted my ost the data
related to the deleted/moved emails might still be present in my ost
albeit not visible ?

If the above assumptions are wrong please throw some insight into the
working of these files.

Thanks and regards
mohit

 

[neo [mvp outlook]]

3) Not necessary. Outlook will try to reuse the space.

 

[mohit]

Hello neo,

Thanks for the response.
The reason I was asking this was thesize of my ost files is close to 1
GB. However when I create a pst file from my ost file the size of the
new pst containing all the info in the ost is not more than a 300 MB.
I assumed the remaining space in the ost was consumed by the deleted/
moved items which had not been removed physically from the ost.

The exact reason why I am asking these question is that I have lost my
pst and I was hoping to somehow retreive my old mails. The exchange
can reinstate ony the mails for tha last 15 days.

Any leads would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Mohit

 

[neo [mvp outlook]]

There will always be overhead in a PST/OST. Other things that you wouldn't
know about are things like inbox rules, custom views/filters, hidden
messages (e.g. auto-archive settings, pop3's keep messages on server
tracking file...).

Not sure what version you are using, but there was a freeware tool called
OST2PST that could convert <= Outlook 2002 OST files. It will not pull back
items that where permanently deleted in the OST.