Defrag outlook pst file

[MaxBurn]

Outlook is dragging a** a bit on my office machine. I like to keep everything but I brought myself to archiving all my 2006 and earlier emails. I used the compress feature built into Outlook and it's way better now but I noticed that defrag won't touch the *.pst files I have. It used to say it was a skipped file but recently it simply marks them as immovable, I don't get that (yes outlook is closed).

I even tried a different used account on the machine. Can't use safe mode for some reason though, locks up. Guess I will eventually have to fix that.

Machine is about sweet in every other way though.

 

[Chewy509]

Why don't you use NT4.0 defrag method?

Copy the PST file off the HDD onto something else, eg USB Key or network share, delete/rename said original file, reboot, and then copy the original file back...

Your PST should now be defragged...

 

[Mercutio]

Can I just interject that Outlook is fucking retarded and there's no excuse for using it?

Microsoft makes Windows. Microsoft makes Outlook. Microsoft presumably could make or license a defragger that understand .pst files.
Yet guess what they do...

 

[MaxBurn]

Can I just interject that Outlook is fucking retarded and there's no excuse for using it?

Microsoft makes Windows. Microsoft makes Outlook. Microsoft presumably could make or license a defragger that understand .pst files.
Yet guess what they do...

It's dictated by Liebert corporate and Emerson the parent company is Oracle. There was supposed to be a big switchover for Liebert to go Oracle but it's not even talked about any more.

Thanks chewy, guess that is what I will have to do.

 

[Handruin]

Can I just interject that Outlook is fucking retarded and there's no excuse for using it?

Microsoft makes Windows. Microsoft makes Outlook. Microsoft presumably could make or license a defragger that understand .pst files.
Yet guess what they do...

I wonder how Mercutio feels about outlook...

I guess my excuse is that it is company mandated and there is no other option than to leave the company...which I'm not willing to do over an e-mail client.

 

[MaxBurn]

Actually I am pretty happy with Outlook and our corporate image in general. Not the fastest thing but everything works. I have had this machine for about a year and a half now without a re-image and because I am careful about what I do and generally I couldn't be more happy with it.

Now that I deleted three years of old emails I don't need, did the compress through outlook and did the move out/back the thing is much snappier.

I also noticed that the file is set up for the 97 compatibility format and not the office 03 format. I wonder if that would help. I don't think i dare to take things that far though.

 

[ddrueding]

I also noticed that the file is set up for the 97 compatibility format and not the office 03 format. I wonder if that would help. I don't think i dare to take things that far though.

Why not? Just make a copy first?

 

[Fushigi]

If you truly deleted emails you don't need that's fine, but to combat huge PST files I keep one for each year. No one year's PST is more than a few hundred MB so while I have 9 years of emails they are easy to scan and trhe files are relatively small.

 

[ddrueding]

I have some users whose Exchange mailbox grows over 1GB/yr. One in particular sends ~1000/week.

 

[Will Rickards]

At work I keep a current year archive and then an archive. I have auto archive setup to archive to the current year archive anything older than 2 weeks.
At the beginning of the next year, about three weeks in, I copy the contents of the current year archive to the archive.
The archive is 2.12GB. This year's archive is 305MB.
That is about 4-5 years of e-mails.

This makes backups easier as I only have to copy the archive once a year. The current year archive I can backup all the time.
When I had it as just one pst I would encounter the 2+GB copying time over the network at each backup time (end of each week).

There is a lot of work related useful information in there.
So it is very important that it be searchable and fast. Before I had Outlook 2007 I used the lookout add-in to make searching faster in outlook. Now I have the MS desktop search installed just so outlook can do its searches. One of these days I'll figure out how to make that search not the default for searching files.

 

[MaxBurn]

Woot, special day today: Just hit the 2gig file size limit on my archive folder. Time to move 2007 off this machine. Looks like I average 1gig a year.

Man after you move the stuff to another PST file that compacting action takes forever...

 

[ddrueding]

I wouldn't know, Gmail all the way!

I do archive to mbox, but I just save that off to something.

 

[Mercutio]

The IMAP inbox on my home server wouldn't fit on a standard gmail account.
I don't put anything in folders, either.

 

[hacksaw]

Outlook is dragging a** a bit on my office machine.

...

I also noticed that the file is set up for the 97 compatibility format and not the office 03 format.

...

Just hit the 2gig file size limit on my archive folder.

Wasn't there a ~1.9Gb size limit on PST files that were formatted for versions of Outlook prior to 2003? Except it wasn't a limit ... more like a minefield that Microsoft felt needed absolutely no warning about?