How big is your Outlook PST file?

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1101

3122 posts

Uber Geek

#1130468 17-Sep-2014 09:56

nathan: PSTs on remote file shares is asking for trouble, as I'm sure you'll know

Problem is when the previous tech set them up that way (WHY !!!) , and thats what the client now wants/expects to work.
One client its been fine for years, another client its started causing issues & will have to be moved back to the local PC.

And the number of users who still consider outlook's 'deleted items' folder as a type of archive/old-mail storage is mind boggling
They cant see that deleted = rubbish to be removed.

markl

348 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1130472 17-Sep-2014 10:04

wasabi2k: 0, because PSTs are the DEVIL.

Gmail for personal.
Exchange + Archive Mailbox for work.

We have well over a terabyte of PSTs around the place - despite hammering them at every opportunity, ingesting into Exchange etc.

I have seen 20-50GB+ PSTs running off file shares. They break DFS-R, badly.

Next step is disabling all PST functionality by group policy.

Lol, they're fine if they are kept locally, and frankly, my work would have to prise my PST out of my cold dead hands before they could put it on a file share.

SepticSceptic

2186 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1130648 17-Sep-2014 13:15

Keep a years worth per PST files, but delete non-work sent n receives.
Keep last 5years PST Open in outlook for search -
Run a compress every now and again ( 6-9monthly) to compact it down.

40meg PST files in 2001-2004 years, up to 300-400meg for recent years

Edit for PST sizes

JimmyH

2886 posts

Uber Geek

#1131105 17-Sep-2014 23:13

wasabi2k:

Next step is disabling all PST functionality by group policy.

It's IT people who do things like that who really annoy me

I don't have any .pst files now, as I'm on contract somewhere that uses a system other than outlook. It's stored in a different, and much more clunky format. But I used to use .psts exclusively in my old job, after bad experiences of letting IT have any control over my email - everyone's old messages more than months of age getting irretrievably purged without warning when they ran low on server space, fried files in migrations, arbitrary and ludicrous mailbox size limits getting imposed, random server outages etc.

As a consequence of which I stored all my email locally and managed it myself. No space constraints, nice and fast, and complete control.

And yes, I knew the risks of storing email locally. I backed it up each night, and had multiple rotating backups (in triplicate) which, after after my futile experience of trying to get deleted emails restored before I moved to self management, I'm confident was both more reliable and safer than what they were doing at the server end.

IT tried to block them and I wound up having an almighty row, which I eventually won and got .pst's reinstated for me as a special exception. Fortunately I had sufficient clout to make that happen. I manage my own email thank you very much. I depend on it, and I ain't surrendering control.

Set some defaults by all means, but let the people who know what they are doing organise their own system. Otherwise you will just antagonise people.

Dynamic

3866 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1131110 17-Sep-2014 23:32

1101: And the number of users who still consider outlook's 'deleted items' folder as a type of archive/old-mail storage is mind boggling
They cant see that deleted = rubbish to be removed.

We have 2 clients that do that. It does my head in. Both are lawyers. Sheesh.

I've warned them both that if one of my guys comes in and empties the Deleted folder as a part of troubleshooting by doing a cleanup, I won't be interested in hearing any complaints. I'm not convinced that sunk in.

I've recently created an 'Archive' folder for one and am trying to retrain him to drag stuff into it from his Deleted folder every few weeks, after being unable to find a way to remap the 'delete' key function to move messages to the Archive folder instead.

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