Archive PST corrupt after storing it on network drive

With Archive feature in MS Outlook .PST file, you can divide your email messages between two or more PSTs depending on your flexibility. All such emails in both PST files are manageable and accessible through Outlook as other email items. An Archive PST is very much useful for those who are dealing with large number of email items and want to draw a line between different categories of emails.

Everything in this world gets damaged or corrupt at one or other point of time. An archive PST file is also prone to corruption due to which a default PST can get corrupt. Your first course of action during PST file corruption should be use of Outlook in-built Inbox Repair Tool. If that turns out to be unsuccessful in recovering PST, you should opt restoring from a good backup or using PST Recovery software.

There are various examples where one stores an archive PST file on network drive and it gets corrupt. In this article we shall be discussing this issue. You archive the Outlook PST file and store the resultant file on a network drive. Then you transfer the archive.pst on your computer. It gets transferred also. But problem arises when you open the same archive.PST file in Outlook.

You go to File Open Outlook Data File; it fails to open and displays the following error message:

“The file drive_letter:\archive.pst is not a personal folders file.”

Cause

The above behavior clearly shows that Outlook is unable to read the archive.pst file, thanks to corruption in it. The personal storage folder structure is been damaged and Outlook PST is not supported over any network link. The PSTs are designed for local message store. The network links use network-access-driven methods, which is contrary to file-access-driven methods used by PST. When the network traffic is not apt, chances are that the file may catch errors. For this reason, an archive.pst can get corrupt if saved on a network drive.

Solution

Use Outlook Inbox Repair Tool (Scanpst.exe) to repair your damaged archive.pst. To run the tool, follow these steps:

Quit from the application

Scanpst.exe is a hidden file. So, make sure that the ‘Show hidden files and folders’ setting is enabled in the folder options

Click Start Search or Find and type ‘Scanpst.exe’ in the Search box.

Double-click to open the file and browse to the location of your damaged archive.pst

Click ‘Start’, which starts the recovery process

Try to open the file in question again. The corruption problem should not exist.

If it fails, then use PST recovery software, which effectively repairs the damaged, broken and corrupt archive.PST file and successfully recovers all email data from it.