Barracuda

Security, Access and Reliability for Cloud-Connected Networks and Applications

Barracuda Solutions for Office 365

Email Security in Office 365 - Migrating your email to Office 365 raises a new set of security and network access challenges. Barracuda can help make the cloud safe for business.
Office 365 Archiving and Compliance - Email compliance regulations and legal holds often require capabilities beyond the built-in features of Office 365.
Protect Office 365 Emails and Data with Cloud-to-Cloud Backup - Even with the best security and archiving tools, it is possible for the important email to be accidentally or maliciously deleted. Barracuda adds full backup and recovery of every Office 365 email using the secure Barracuda cloud.

Repairing a Personal Archive or PST file

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Personal Archive files in Outlook, often call PST files are used to email and other items outside of Exchange or Outlook. If the file becomes damaged, the data within it can potentially be inaccessible.

There are a number of reasons why a PST might become damaged the most common being; when a PST files grow to an unstable size (which can be either 2GB for Outlook 2003 related PST files, or 20 GB for Outlook 2007/10 ( often called Unicode PSTs)

When this occurs,

1 – find scanpst.exe, which is hidden away within your PC’s program files (this location changes with each version of Outlook, so it is advised to search the disk for the file.)

2 – run the executable

3 – select the browse button to locate the PST with the issue, and select start. This will now scan the PST, looking for problems to resolve (and so may take a while) and should offer you the option to repair them once it has completed. You should now be able to open the PST and access the data, although this is not a guaranteed method to recover the data and so some data loss may have occurred.

If this did not resolve the issue, you may need a third party repair tool. There are many options available, both paid for and freeware, but the same caveat applies – none of these will be able to guarantee the return of all data, so for that reason ensure you always have good backups of your PSTs, and preferably move away completely from PST files using PST Management software to discover and archive the data contained within them.

Or for more information on PSTs click here

Do you know how many PSTs are in your network?

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How many of your users use PSTs?  How many does each have?  And do you know the average size of each PST?  If the answer to any of these questions is “I don’t know”, then you’re not along. A recurring theme I hear from our customers is that it was easy enough to get into the situation where PST usage has gotten out of hand, but they have no idea how big the issue has become.

Here’s another question for you –what provisions do you take to ensure this data (confidential, potentially critical data) is backed up?  Do you rely on your end users?  A quick search via Google for corrupt pst file returns over 500,000 hits, simply put PSTs create major problems and there is very little help in solving those problems. and this is not taking into account general disk problems that can occur with worrying frequency.

Let’s be honest – without help, finding PST data is tough, and when you find it, it’s not easy discovering what type of data is contained within.  Isn’t it time you controlled your data before it controls you?

PST Manager from C2C can help you turn the above uncertainty into answers.  It works in the background collecting the data you need to ascertain the size of the task at hand. By doing this without user intervention, you can make informed decisions without impacting the day to day running of the business. You don’t need to be doing email archiving to achieve this, PST Manager is there to help you understand your problem, before you make a decision on what to do next.

Archive software for the effective management of PST files

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Mailboxes on company mail servers are frequently constrained by certain size quotas. As these quotas are close to being reached because of a large volume of email traffic, the mailbox is likely to issue a notification to its user to take action to preserve the performance of the system. The action called for usually involves a choice.

Users can either choose to sift through their email and find items suitable for deletion to free up space or they can choose to allow the email system to archive older items in personal folders known as PSTs.

The disadvantage of deleting email is simply that it takes a great deal of time to accomplish. Users must identify which items they need to keep and which they should delete. Moreover, this course of action is usually a very short term solution.

However, the creation of PST files of little benefit to the user either. This is because PST files are very difficult to manage. These files go against best practice and are at odds with regulations concerning email retention because they are so difficult to locate and monitor.

The best solution to these issues is to install email archiving software which is equipped to manage and recover these PST files into the archive. Software of this kind automatically archives email that enters the company servers along with existing email and PSTS data, and requires no intervention from users.

How do I find Unassociated PSTs?

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Discovering an unassociated (uncoupled) PST is not very easy.

The PSTs could be anywhere. They could be on a network share, they may be in a current user location or somewhere that was used a number of years ago. Therefore, you will need to search all server locations. They could be on a local drive, on a desktop machine, a laptop or even on someone's computer at home. This could occur if they were using Outlook from their home computer.

Finding the ones on a server drive should be relatively straightforward, just taking up a certain amount of time and effort! However, finding PSTs on a local drive is virtually impossible without the right application. This is where you need PST management from C2C.

C2C's PST management exists in a number of their products; it provides the ability to locate PSTs on a local drive by scanning the drive(s) from an Outlook session. An Outlook add-in will find the local PSTs and report back to the admin any information on their size and location. It can also report back on the content of the PST such as number of emails, or examine the content of emails and their attachments.

The software depends on users logging in to Outlook, so it may take a few days to gather all the information, but in a relatively short period of time, the admin will benefit from knowledge about all the PSTs and their locations.

Then the issue moves onto the decision about what to do with these unassociated PSTs.

What can I do with Unassociated PSTs?

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After you have understood the implications of an unassociated PST, you will probably be asking yourself, how can I find them? And then you will be wondering what your options are regarding the recovery of the PST itself.

If you have used the C2C PST management software to find the PSTs, you will now know how many PSTs you have, along with their size, the number of emails contained within them and their location.

The issue now is: what can I do with them?

If they are a current employee, then the PST needs to be associated to the user and managed that way.

If the owner has left the organization, then the answer is to comply with company policy, or perhaps the former owner's manager will have a view.

The options range from;

  • Deleting the PST (risky, as it may contain valuable data)
  • Moving the PST to a known location
  • Deleting any unwanted email, as this reduces the volume of emails and increases the relevancy of the data being held. This, this can be achieved by;

o  Deleting emails with a certain profile (e.g. all emails containing MP3, AVI, or WMV attachments)
o  Deleting mail over a certain age

  • Importing the PST into an archive where it can be managed.

Although it is possible to “just import” the PST, it is advisable to remove any unwanted data. This reduces the amount of work during the import AND reduces the liability on your organization through holding these unnecessary emails.

See C2C PST management for more options.

Managing PST files

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Research has found that the most common responses in users exceeding their mailbox quota are to delete emails, create personal archives, expand the mailbox or, as a last resort, complain to the IT department.  Users and administrators tend to create PST files to store and archive older emails and attachments.

None of these options are the most efficient, or the most cost-effective. Panic-managing emails and implementing temporary measures such as PST files cuts into productivity significantly, taking up time that could be spent on more important matters.

The problem with PST files

In short, PST files have the following drawbacks:

  • They are difficult to manage and locate
  • They take up space on local and/or server drives, using disk space inefficiently
  • They are easily corrupted and time-consuming to repair
  • They are difficult to monitor and can only be accessed by the owner

The solution

The only viable solution for companies with any kind of mailbox quota is a comprehensive email management system, ensuring that existing PST files are managed and the need to use them in the future is eliminated. Programs such as ArchiveOne give control over the migration, discovery and management of PST files back to the administrator. Overall, these systems aim to make worries over mailbox quotas a thing of the past.