PST files are one of the most effective ways to store various mailbox items such as contacts, emails, notes, and calendar items. Due to a computer crash or hardware failure, the PST files of the MS Outlook account might be ruined and users will nothave the right to use the essential data items.
When the PST files are damaged or corrupte, if you don’t take the necessary steps immediately,you might end up losing all the data items permanently. Even though you can use the ScanPST tool, it might fail to prove effective for major PST file corruption. This is why you need to use a PST recovery tool that will help you fix the corrupted PST files and extract the important data items. After creating a fresh PST file, you can migrate the data items. Continue reading the article to know the different aspects of PST file recovery.
What are PST Files and How They Can Be Used?
The PST files, also known as the MS Outlook data files, are one of the most important file formats of the MS Outlook account that can be used to store crucial mailbox items and attachments such as calendar events, contacts, notes, and emails, and more.
PST is the abbreviated name for Personal Storage Table. Developed by Microsoft, the PST files are being used as a storage format for more than 20 years. You can store the local copies of the mailbox items with the PST files.
The PST files are one of the most famous choices for archiving and backups due to their nature, longevity, and capability of sharing different types of items stored by the MS Exchange.
Signs of PST File Corruption
If you need to know about the signs of PST file corruption so that you can understand whether the PST files of your MS Outlook account have been corrupted or not. When you’re unable to open or access the PST files, consider this as the primary sign of PST file corruption. Here are the other behaviors you need to look for:
- Sometimes the MS Outlook itself identifies the PST file corruption and asks you whether you want to fix it. You might think that corrupted PST files can be repaired by the ScanPST tool easily. But this doesn’t happen all the time. If you need to fix the outlook corruption, you need to use the PST recovery tool.
- Sometimes you will receive a message saying that Out of memory or system resources.
- Other times, you won’t be able to access Outlook due to crashes
There are various causes behind PST file corruption. Sometimes users forget to turn off the system or the MS Outlook application properly which makes the PST files suffer from severe crashes. Remember that the data structure of the PST files is important. Therefore, you need to ensure that nothing is affecting the data structure of the PST files.
How Long Will It Take to Repair the Corrupted PST Files?
This is one of the most common questions people ask while managing corrupted PST files. If you don’t use a professional and third-party PST recovery tool, you might not be able to repair the corrupted PST files quickly. But the time taken for the repair process of the PST files will increase when you’re fixing the bigger files. The process contains different steps such as reading, processing, and writing countless data items. Therefore, the time to complete the process is hugely dependent on the contents as well as the size of the PST files, the speed of the hard drive, and the performance of the processor. If you have an SSD running on your computer, the PST file repairing process can be completed quickly. As per Kingstone, SSDs are faster than HDDs. Additionally, if you have higher processors running, you can also decrease the time. You can rebuild PST files for 10GB within 15 minutes if you have SSD. However, the same process will take more than 4 hours if you have an HDD.
Should You Stop Using the PST Files?
This question is asked by the MS Outlook users who suffered from PST file corruption in the past. Remember that just like any other files, the corruption of the PST files is inevitable. (Valium) It’s just a matter of time before the PST files will be corrupted. If you think you should stop using the PST files, remember that there are no other file formats capable of storing the mailbox items of the MS Exchange server. PST files are not only portable but also offer long-term irretrievability.
If you think that you need to store the mailbox items and attachments offline without taking the help of the PST files, you won’t have many options left for you. Even though you can use alternatives, they aren’t effective.
Conclusion
This is how you can rebuild and repair the corrupted PST files. If you have any other queries, feel free to comment below to let us know.
