Sorry for the delay, I am swamped right now.
63,000 files is the absolute limit. F.A.S.T. is a very powerful utility,
but in many ways is unfinished in my opinion. That is why I wrote the
article
http://aumha.org/win5/a/fast.htm so one can figure out how to best
use it and tweak the few things that can be tweaked. You can limit the
files to just OE files and I specifically go over how to do that in the
article. That limits the number of files a great deal. You can always go
through and take out types of files to limit the number harvested, but
most
people do not bother to do that.
Today's world with the number of files typical on a heavily used system
the
63,000 limit is out of date. Of course not being able to exclude drives
so
you have to physically disconnect them was probably not a good idea in the
first place.
MS made it clear they were not going to add any features
in SP1, just fixes to F.A.S.T. But, I had hoped SP2 would see the needed
changes. There were no improvements in SP2 except for possibly the
ability
to use removable drives such as a jumpdrive, also documented in my article
and nowhere else that I am aware of.
F.A.S.T. seems to be the great feature that MS wrote and then promptly
decided to ignore. It is a shame as it is a powerful tool that could have
been even better with further development. Hopefully the next OS will see
those needed improvements. It appears that there will be nothing new for
WinXP.
Unfortunately in Ray's situation his only hope is Fastconv and hoping that
his E-mail files did make the trip before the 63,000 limit was hit. That
is a crapshoot at best. It is also why in my article I included under
"Reminders and Troubleshooting" #6 the following.
One should always check to make sure the newly saved F.A.S.T. file is not
corrupted. The easiest way to do that is to act like you are going to
import the new file to the system from which you saved it. Go to Start |
All Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Files and Settings Transfer
Wizard and start to import the file. You will get the following error if
the file is corrupted in some way: "The location that you specified does
not contain any stored information." If you get this error message, delete
the export file and do the F.A.S.T. collection again.
PA Bear said:
Via private email I have pinged Gary to see if he might want to reply to
this thread, Ray.
--
~Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
MS MVP-Windows (IE/OE)
Posting and You
http://www.trials-shack.co.uk/posting.html
Ray said:
Someone else who reads this first will thank you for the advice. It is
unfortunately too late for me -- now I MUST get the Fastconv or
something
like it to retrieve my files!*%$
HOW? More examples of how to use Fastconv would perhaps be helpful.
:
Before trying to transfer your OE files, have a good clean-out of
messages you no longer want or need. Move all messages from Inbox and
Sent Items to local folders created for this purpose and empty Deleted
Items folder. Now compact all folders:
Don't use Inbox or Sent Items to archive messages. Move them to local
folders created for this purpose.
Disable Background Compacting [N/A in SP2] and frequently perform a
manual compact of all OE folders while "working offline". More at
http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/files/maintain.htm.
See Gary's caveats about using FAST to transfer OE data. I wouldn't
use
FAST for this myself.
References:
Backup & Restore OE Data
http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/backup/index.htm
http://www.oehelp.com/backup.aspx
OE Files & Settings
http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/files/index.htm
Importing OE Data
http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/faqs/how.htm#importOE5
http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/faqs/how.htm#importdbx
OE Freebie Backup
http://www.oehelp.com/OEBackup/Default.aspx
Using WinXP's FAST Wizard, by MVP Gary Woodruff
http://aumha.org/win5/a/fast.htm
--
OE6-specific newsgroup:
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.windows.inetexplorer.ie6_outlookexpress
~Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
MS MVP-Windows (IE/OE), AH-VSOP
What You Should Know About Spyware
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/devioussoftware.mspx
Files & Settings doesn't do wrote:
I have use F.A.S.T successfully several times, but suddenly ran into a
problem moving MY user to a new machine. The wizard made two 2G files
+ a little left over for my 5 years of Outloook Express emails and
lots
of other My Documents.
But now it won't restore! I'm trying the FastConv tool mentioned in
Gary Woodruff's
http://aumha.org/win5/a/fast.htm, but I'm not grokkng
the syntax for /e and /i options -- like how do I include only
Outlook
Express, or only MY Documents, so as hopefully not to hit the 63000
limit?
