.OST full (2 GB) during POP collection = all new mail lost?

[Takeo Sato]

The subject says it all... Outlook 2003 in Cached Exchange Mode
(non-Unicode, i.e. inheriting old 2 GB limit) on Windows XP. Was working
offline, collecting two days of POP3 mail, and at the end of the collection
I got the error message saying that the .ost file had reached the size
limit... Very stupidly, Outlook 2003 (!!!) _deleted_ all mail from the POP3
server before making sure that the same had been stored properly, so it
appears to be all lost now? Just out of curiosity, where did Outlook write
this data as it was being collected? Was it being appended to the .ost file?
I tried various tools to reduce the size of the .ost file, and also run
scanpst on it, with no apparent success. Maybe my big mistake was to try and
delete a few large old messages and then compact the file upon getting the
error message...

Any help appreciated!

 

[Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]]

See if any of the methods/troubleshooting here helps:
http://www.slipstick.com/problems/repair2gbpst.htm

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. Due to
the (insert latest virus name here) virus, all mail sent to my personal
account will be deleted without reading.

After searching google.groups.com and finding no answer, Takeo Sato asked:

| The subject says it all... Outlook 2003 in Cached Exchange Mode
| (non-Unicode, i.e. inheriting old 2 GB limit) on Windows XP. Was
| working offline, collecting two days of POP3 mail, and at the end of
| the collection I got the error message saying that the .ost file had
| reached the size limit... Very stupidly, Outlook 2003 (!!!) _deleted_
| all mail from the POP3 server before making sure that the same had
| been stored properly, so it appears to be all lost now? Just out of
| curiosity, where did Outlook write this data as it was being
| collected? Was it being appended to the .ost file? I tried various
| tools to reduce the size of the .ost file, and also run scanpst on
| it, with no apparent success. Maybe my big mistake was to try and
| delete a few large old messages and then compact the file upon
| getting the error message...
|
| Any help appreciated!

 

[Takeo Sato]

See if any of the methods/troubleshooting here helps:

http://www.slipstick.com/problems/repair2gbpst.htm

Thanks for the quick reply, Milly. No, I am afraid I had tried pst2gb both
with and without the -s option, and both with and without scanpst. I also
tried the EasyRecovery tool evaluation, but the Inbox shows the same number
of "recovered" mails I show in Outlook. I had not tried the manual hex edit,
but then also the iHex editor they recommend there is not a tool that can be
used for this purpose (it can only overwrite, not delete bytes, AFAIK). Not
sure what editor would allow me to edit a 2 GB file... Tried a few editors
claiming support for "long" files... I guess my original question remains,
before insisting on recovering data from the .ost file that may not even be
there in the first place: where did Outlook temporarily write the data it
fetched from the POP3 account before noticing that the .ost was "full"? Was
it blindly appended to the .ost? Was it then swiped away when I compacted
the .ost?

Microsoft, if you are listening, why don't you fix these two procedures so
we don't lose any data in what should be normal operations?! What I think is
badly needed is a simple Yes/No option to convert the .ost to Unicode format
when "full"... Otherwise a user like myself who reaches the limit while
offline is simply stuck. And we are speaking Outlook "2003", not something
from 10 years ago...