.PST help !!!

[vanillawafer]

Is there a way to recover users .pst files in exchange 2000?

I had a user lose all of her .pst files off of the local machine due to some kind of corrupted file or something.

An error message came up stating that the information stor for this user was corrupted.

I ended up deleting her profile in outlook and re-creating it. After I recreated it her calender or contacts didn't restore themselves.

I have a back-up on the exchange server. Is there a way to restore those files? If so, how do I do it?

Help, it's an executive staff and she is pretty anxious.

 

[Davetoo]

Did you backup her local PST files?

PST files take information from Exchange and stores it in the PST file instead. If you lose the PST file, you lose the data it contained.

I'm Certifiable, not certified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.

 

[Marcs41]

If you are on Exchange you should NOT be using PST files because, as you noticed by now, there is no backup, unless you saved a copy of the PST somewhere.

I hope you have a copy somewhere or you may see the anxious person turn into something else ...

Marc
[sub]If 'something' 'somewhere' gives 'some' error, expect random guesses or no replies at all. Please specify details.
Free Tip: The F1 Key does NOT destroy your PC![/sub]
How Do I Get Great Answers To my Tek-Tips Questions? See faq219-2884

 

[mawilson]

If you just deleted the Outlook profile, the pst files should still be there. If you deleted her windows profile, you are probably hosed on this one. Just in case, do a search on the machine for pst files. Try to open each one in Outlook and see if her calendar and address book are there.

 

[vanillawafer]

I only deleted the outlook profile. So are you saying that those files should be stored somewhere on her C: Drive?

Thanks everyone for all of the info.

 

[mawilson]

If you look in docs and settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook you might find them there. Also look at C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook. Some psts are created there also.

 

[Davetoo]

Just search her drive for *.pst, find the one that is dated the day she last accessed her Outlook, and you should have it.

I'm Certifiable, not certified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.

 

[vanillawafer]

Thanks,

I will check there...

 

[vanillawafer]

Well I wasn't able to locate any recent .pst files on the the users hard-drive.

This is what my supervisor recommended. Tell me what you think.

He wants me to attempt to recover from a back-up tape. He said to do this with out damaging the other users we have to setup a mirror image of our domain network and Exchange Server and domain controller off the company domain The copy of the information store and directory is larger than the remaining space on the Exchange Server so it will have to be pulled from the tape on another server with adequate room and then moved to the test exchange server in the offline network.

I would appreciate any feed-back...

Thanks again

 

[Davetoo]

If the user that lost the email was retrieving the email from the Exchange server and keeping it in a PST file that was located on her local machine, then going back to a tape backup of the IS that didn't contain the subject email in the first place will do nothing but waste time.

Now, if the user deleted all their email off the Exchange server by accident, then yes, you can restore the IS to another system and export it to a PST, then import it back into the users Exchange box.

However, you clearly stated the user was using PST files on their local system, and these PST file(s) no longer exist. Unless you backed up the users local PST files, you're not going to recover the email in the scenario you orignally asked about.

It's an either or...either the user was using PST's locally, or they weren't. Which is it?

I'm Certifiable, not certified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.

 

[Marcs41]

I think you better show this thread to your supervisor ;-)

 

[vanillawafer]

Well we found out later that our hardware specialist set her machine up as a test machine sometime ago. He said that he had her .pst files being redirected to our exchange server, however, we can't find them in the folder that they were supposedly being redirected to.

Thanks again for all of the info.