Personal Storage Table (PST) is the format of a data file that MS Outlook creates locally on your computer to save emails, contacts, drafts, notes, journals, calendar items and inbox information. PST files can be used for the purpose of archiving emails and storing them on local computer. PST files are very important, that is, if a PST file gets corrupt, the user cannot access his mailbox.
PST files, which were created, by MS Outlook 2002 or earlier versions, had a size limit associated with them. That is, PST files could not exceed the limit of 2GB. On crossing this limit, either the Server may crash or the PST files may get corrupt and unreadable. Microsoft Outlook has an inbuilt tool, ‘scanpst.exe’ that can be used to recover such corrupt PST files. However, this tool often did not work if the amount of damage in a PST was major.
In order to reduce the PST damage due to size limitation, changes in the character format have been made in Outlook 2003 and later versions. Outlook 2003 and 2007 support UNICODE character format and the PST can be up to 20 GB. The latest version of MS Outlook i.e. 2010 supports UNICODE character format and the PST created using this has the default size limit of 50 GB, which can be modified by making some changes in the Registry entries. For further information about modifying PST size limits please refer to this link http://support.microsoft.com/kb/832925.
Issues with PST file
Whilst there are advantages of PST file, it carries some disadvantages as well. Corruption of the PST file most often leaves you in the critical situation of data loss due to which you need to fix PST to recover the lost data. There can be several reasons for the damage of the PST file. For example, if the PST file is being accessed over a network, then it may get damaged due to many problem in the network connection during the read/write operation. Therefore, Microsoft never recommends sharing PST over network.
Other reasons that may lead to the damage of PST file are sudden system shut down, corruption of the PST header, hard disk corruption, virus attack, exceeding maximum size limit, failure of MS Outlook, etc. Due to any of these reasons, the Outlook.pst file may get damaged and all emails, notes, contacts, journals, etc. stored in it become inaccessible. At this moment, you need to fix PST to reclaim the lost emails and other items from the corrupt PST.
Emails deleted from PST are in fact marked as deleted but not actually deleted. Hence, the size of PST file is not reduced. The space consumed by the deleted items is marked as unallocated for further use. If you need to recover some important emails that have been deleted by mistake then use scanpst.exe to fix PST. After you have repaired PST with scanpst.exe, you will see the recovered deleted items in the “Deleted Items” folder in your mailbox.
Default Microsoft Solution to fix PST
Emails, contacts, calendar entries and other related items can have enormous importance for Outlook users. Microsoft has provided a default tool named Inbox Repair Tool (scanpst.exe) to fix PST file. The Inbox Repair Tool can effectively deal with the PST file having minor corruptions, but in case the PST is severely damaged, the tool fails to repair the corrupt PST. However, if you are still not sure about how to repair PST file, then use a third party PST fix tool.
PST Fix Tool to Repair PST
PST fix tool is the best solution to recover emails, contacts, notes, etc. especially when the PST is severely damaged and Microsoft Inbox Repair Tool has failed to repair the PST. The tool supports both ANSI and Unicode character formats. Comprising of self-descriptive user interface, the PST fix tool can be used without having much technical knowledge.
