Recover Outlook PST file

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dolta2

n00b
Joined
Apr 20, 2014
Messages
4
Guys

My WD drive started making a lot of read/write sounds even though the computer wasn't doing much after defragmenting Windows 2008 a week ago. Since then, I've rebuilt the PC on a SSD but on trying to copy my most important file ps1.pst (outlook), it gives me an error

An unexpected error is keeping you from copying the file. Error 0x8007045D: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.
ps1.pst
Type: PST File
Size: 5.29 GB

I have not run any diagnostics on the older HDD but was able to pull out all data except this file. What is the best way to get this file back? I can run some diagnostics and error correction but those things often fail. Is there something else I can do to get this file back like use some open-source recovery software?

Thanks
 
If the drive has a bad sector where part of the file is stored you might try spinrite (which is a program that trys to repetitively re read the affected sector to get a 1 last read of it. Spinrite isn't free though.
 
The options above are good. What does the SMART output of the drive show? Bad sectors? Bad cable?

Another option is to take a sector-by-sector image of the drive first (either in an enclosure, another computer, or the same host machine). After that open Outlook on the old drive and export the data through Outlook onto a working drive. As a last resort, you can do it folder-by-folder to minimize lost data.
 
dolta2 said:
Guys

My WD drive started making a lot of read/write sounds even though the computer wasn't doing much after defragmenting Windows 2008 a week ago. Since then, I've rebuilt the PC on a SSD but on trying to copy my most important file ps1.pst (outlook), it gives me an error

An unexpected error is keeping you from copying the file. Error 0x8007045D: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.
ps1.pst
Type: PST File
Size: 5.29 GB

I have not run any diagnostics on the older HDD but was able to pull out all data except this file. What is the best way to get this file back? I can run some diagnostics and error correction but those things often fail. Is there something else I can do to get this file back like use some open-source recovery software?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Geez, a PST file of over 5 GB. You must be a very serious Outlook'er. :)

Have you tried the Microsoft utiliity scanpst? It's pretty simple-minded, and I'm not sure it fixes all errors, but it's a start. It will make a backup, and then try to recover the file. In my experience, you often have to run scanpst 2-3 times to get a clean PST file. If scanpst doesn't work, there are various commercial utilities that claim to recover any amount of errors in a PST file. Be prepared to shell out some serious coin. They usually have demo versions available that will show you what would be recovered if you buy the full program.

Good luck. :)
 
Firstly, I have to tell you how stupid I feel. I thought bad sectors would happen to other people, not me :(

At first, when I right click the drive and choose Show smart disk info, it shows all parameters like raw read error rate, spin up time, etc with green checkmarks. However, when I run quick test, this is the result
06-Quick test on drive 3 did not complete!
Status code=07 (Failed read test element), Failure Checkpoint = 97 (Unknown Test)
SMART self-test did not complete on drive 3!

Extended test
WDC WD30EZRS-00J99B0
Firmware 80.00a80
08-too many bad sectors detected


Now, I do have my bad HDD connected via a SATA to USB 3.0 adaptor. Should I first try to simply open the pst with Outlook and if sucessful, do an export of as many folders as possible. OR should I first try a sector to sector copy - would Spinrite do that and do I need a dedictated destination HDD? I already have a 4TB HDD with 1TB used for some other data that I'd like to leverage

Thx
 
dolta2 said:
Firstly, I have to tell you how stupid I feel. I thought bad sectors would happen to other people, not me :(

At first, when I right click the drive and choose Show smart disk info, it shows all parameters like raw read error rate, spin up time, etc with green checkmarks. However, when I run quick test, this is the result
06-Quick test on drive 3 did not complete!
Status code=07 (Failed read test element), Failure Checkpoint = 97 (Unknown Test)
SMART self-test did not complete on drive 3!

Extended test
WDC WD30EZRS-00J99B0
Firmware 80.00a80
08-too many bad sectors detected


Now, I do have my bad HDD connected via a SATA to USB 3.0 adaptor. Should I first try to simply open the pst with Outlook and if sucessful, do an export of as many folders as possible. OR should I first try a sector to sector copy - would Spinrite do that and do I need a dedictated destination HDD? I already have a 4TB HDD with 1TB used for some other data that I'd like to leverage

Thx
Click to expand...

Hey, don't feel stupid. :( things like this happen to all of us, at least once. :eek:

Sure you should try to open up the file in Outlook. Here is what I have done on some occasions. I create a whole new Outlook file. Folder by folder, I do a copy from the old to the new PST. You may not recover everything, but that is a very low-impact way to start. Before you do anything make a backup copy of the original file, IF POSSIBLE.

Good luck some more. I'm going to guess that if you have a 5 GB+ Outlook file, you have some important stuff there.
 
Always do a backup first before manipulating data, if possible. You must make that judgement call based on the shape of the drive. Then get on the process of exporting folder by folder.
 
Based on your description, some of the sectors on your hard disk have problems and your PST file is just located on these bad sectors.

For the sake of safety, you can you make a disk image of your hard disk, with tools such as:

unix build-in command dd, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dd_(Unix)
IsoBuster at http://www.isobuster.com/

Then try to use some Outlook data recovery tools to recover your Outlook data, from the PST file, from the ISO image of the disk, or from the disk directly, for example,

DataNumen Outlook Repair at http://www.datanumen.com/outlook-repair/ can recover from the PST file as well as from the disk image of your harddisk.

So the most safe way to do the recovery is below:

1. Make an ISO image of the harddisk, and save the image on to another error-free disk.

2. THen use Outlook data recovery tool to recover from the ISO image instead of performing on the original disk directly, to prevent your disk from being damaged more.

Hope that will helps.

Good luck!


dolta2 said:
Guys

My WD drive started making a lot of read/write sounds even though the computer wasn't doing much after defragmenting Windows 2008 a week ago. Since then, I've rebuilt the PC on a SSD but on trying to copy my most important file ps1.pst (outlook), it gives me an error

An unexpected error is keeping you from copying the file. Error 0x8007045D: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.
ps1.pst
Type: PST File
Size: 5.29 GB

I have not run any diagnostics on the older HDD but was able to pull out all data except this file. What is the best way to get this file back? I can run some diagnostics and error correction but those things often fail. Is there something else I can do to get this file back like use some open-source recovery software?

Thanks
Click to expand...
 
If you are using dd and you have bad sectors it will fail.

You need to use dd_rescue

This stuff is low level so you have to feel comfortable working with it, if not get a buddy to help you. You can use sysrescuecd it has dd_rescue. You can also download clonezilla it has dd_rescue.

There's a lot to this but your first goal is to image the partition of the old disk to a new hard disk. dd_rescue will do a block by block copy and try hard to recover each block. It may take a long time.

If you are successful then that is a good sign you will be able to use your outlook file, it still may be corrupt in sections inside but perhaps outlook itself can repair most of it or other tools. However you have to get the copy of what you can first.

Check out this website it has quite a bit of info: http://www.technibble.com/forums/showthread.php?t=48269
 
PST files can become corrupt for various reasons such as malfunctioning of window system, virus attacks, accidental deletion of outlook mailbox and hard disk corruption. In these situation you need to repair PST file by using RecoveryFix for Outlook tool to repair large number of inaccessible outlook PST files and user accounts in one cycle. This utility extracts all data such as emails, email properties, attachments, calendars, drafts, notes and other items from the corrupt personal storage tables.

Read more-http://www.recoverytool.org/outlook-pst-recovery.html
 
Thanks to everybody on this thread - no data recovery worked but my Outlook opened up the PST file and through a series of errors and application hangs, I recovered most of my mail by copying over emails to a new PST

Thanks all!
 
kevinpeeter said:
PST files can become corrupt for various reasons such as malfunctioning of window system, virus attacks, accidental deletion of outlook mailbox and hard disk corruption. In these situation you need to repair PST file by using RecoveryFix for Outlook tool to repair large number of inaccessible outlook PST files and user accounts in one cycle. This utility extracts all data such as emails, email properties, attachments, calendars, drafts, notes and other items from the corrupt personal storage tables.

Read more-http://www.recoverytool.org/outlook-pst-recovery.html
Click to expand...

Do you have personal experience with this tool? Does it do "complete" recovery? It's priced much less than some other PST recovery tools.
 
dolta2 said:
Thanks to everybody on this thread - no data recovery worked but my Outlook opened up the PST file and through a series of errors and application hangs, I recovered most of my mail by copying over emails to a new PST

Thanks all!
Click to expand...

Congrats. :D Did you run scanpst as part of the recovery process?
 
Just one suggestion for the future. The larger your (local) PST files are the higher your chances of trouble. Turn on auto archiving and of course have good backups!
 
In that case, I highly recommend you to make a backup your PST file in Windows, if that is possible. If not possible, then since you can access the PST in Outlook, you can create a copy by creating a new PST file, and copy all the accessible items in your original PST file to the new one. Then after the copy, make a copy of the new PST file.

So, in a word, backup is the most important thing, much more important than data recovery!

dolta2 said:
Thanks to everybody on this thread - no data recovery worked but my Outlook opened up the PST file and through a series of errors and application hangs, I recovered most of my mail by copying over emails to a new PST

Thanks all!
Click to expand...
 
Nice job on the recovery dolta, glad you got most of it.

Just a note for future reference on this type of thing..... Outlook utilities like scanpst will assume you are operating on a good hard drive. That utility only looks at logical Outlook database type of errors, NOT the underlying disk errors. You could even make the problem worse using scanpst since you are then doing more heavy disk I/O.

Disk errors must be addressed with chkdsk, disk diags/recovery utilities, Spinrite, etc.
Once you recover a copy of the data to a good hard drive, then you could attempt using the scanpst utility.

In this case, dolta did the right thing by just trying to open the PST from within Outlook and copy as much as possible.
 
Last edited:
Surprised nobody mentioned this; run chkdsk on the drive, often times if a file can't be accessed its because of underlying filesystem problems. Those may be caused by bad sectors or power interruption or crashes.
 
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