cached mode question

[Guest]

If a user over a slow wan link uses outlook with the cached exchange mode on,
I understand that a copy of the mailbox will be synchronized to the local PC.
My question is that if the users local hard drive fails & is replaced with a
new 1, is it possible to restore the cached copy (e.g. from tape) to the new
hard drive in order to avoid the lengthy re-synchronization ?

thanks,

 

[neo [mvp outlook]]

Yes, it is possible to use a "seed" ost.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=872930 might be helpful.*

/neo

* This article doesn't do justice because it doesn't mention that using a
backup OST can fail. Basically if you take a backup of an OST, start
Outlook and run for a bit, shutdown, and then try to fall back to OST copy,
an error should be thrown that it can't be used. More or less, using a seed
should be seen where the customer starts in traditional mode while IT staff
prep an OST and ship it to the user.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the info,

I am unclear on your caveat though, as near as I can understand, you are
saying that if I follow the steps in the KBA, eventually I will get a
"corrupt OST" error, so I shouldn't do it. Your recommendation is to have a
user work in non-cached mode 1st, then I should copy the "seed OST" file to
their directory and then turn on cached mode ?

 

[neo [mvp outlook]]

Not a problem because explaining isn't straight forward. What I was trying
to say is that coming up a backup would most likely fail because there are
some internal pointers that know when the OST was last sync'd t to a
mailbox. With that said, here is an example of a fail.

* User comes in Tuesday morning and goes to work.
* Around 10 AM, hardware failure to where all is lost on hard drive
* New machine is setup
* OST is retrieved from Monday nights backup and used in seed procedure

When Outlook is launched at this point, it will complain about the OST and a
new one has to be created.