Repairing a pst.

[licarse]

Hi,

Several days ago, a user deleted an important .pst less than 1 GB. The user restarted the PC and did a lot of stuff before asking help, so data recovery was really hard, but we finally managed to recover the .pst

The problem now is that the .pst is damaged. When using tools like Stellar, pst2gb, scanpst and others, they recover 20-50 emails from a total of thousands of them.

It may be possible that some data of the file was overwritten, but then my guess is that we couldn't be able to recover it. How do we fix it??? We're already next to the finish line.... there's got to be something to do!!!

 

[longhair]

licarse,
maybe a silly question but was the pst / machine backed up?
if not may be an idea for the future.
what is the size of the recovered pst?
regards,
longhair

 

[licarse]

No, it wasn't backed-up.

The size of the recovered pst is 199 MBs.

Some friend of mine advised me to use a Hex Editor, but... I have no idea on what to fix with the editor.

 

[Daveyboy2]

Microsoft makes a PST recovery tool. I've used it to extract messages out of 2 GB+ PST files, and it works pretty well. It's the inbox repair tool.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA010563001033.aspx

The Tool: (Carson Daily?)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q272227/

 

[licarse]

Thanks Davyboy2, but scanpst or pst2gb (Microsoft's inbox repair tools) don't work in this case, they only recover 20-30 messages, not nearly a 0.04% of all data in the pst.

I didn't understand what you said about Carson Daily. The link you provided is one in Microsoft's site.

Any other idea???? Help is urgently needed.

 

[longhair]

licarse,
take a look a this page

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

it appears you may need to run scandisk and scanpst numerous times.
regards,
longhair

 

[licarse]

Thanks longhair. I did that but didn't work...

 

[sawedoff]

Try right clicking on the PSt in Outlook, and choose Properties. Then click Advanced, and choose Compact Now. Then try the Scanpst again.

Sawedoff

 

[licarse]

Thanks sawedoff, but it didn't work. Same thing, just 20-30 emails recovered.

 

[sawedoff]

Are the 20-30 emails all in the inbox? Is it possible the bulk of the size is in the sent items or deleted folders? If they have large attachments, that could be all there is. Right click on the name of the PST in Outlook and check the filesize and see where the weighty emails are.

I know this sounds pretty basic, but sometimes the easy stuff gets overlooked.

Sawedoff

 

[licarse]

I agree with you: I appreciate that you post the basic stuff too!

Here's the weird thing: 20-30 emails, all of them in the Lost & Found area, making a total size (in Outlook) of 420 Kb. BUT the total file size (in the Explorer) of the pst is 200 MB.

I know we're almost there... I mean, it's impossible(?) that 199.5 Mbs of info are lost in the void...

 

[licarse]

Help is most appreciated... anyone willing to post more ideas?

 

[richi23]

Try EasyRecovery or OutlookFix demo versions