Few Reasons and Resolutions for Outlook PST Corruption

MS Outlook uses the PST (Personal Storage Table) file to store all the Outlook-related information such as emails, calendar items, notes, journals, contacts, etc. This PST file is transferable and can be used on a different system from the one on which is created. However, you may find some problems in using Outlook because of PST corruption due to miscellaneous reasons. When you encounter PST corruption, you should try to repair the PST file. If you are unable to perform PST Repair, then you should use a third-party pst recovery software to do the needful.

Causes:

There are lots of reasons that can make an Outlook PST file get corrupt and disable you from using Outlook in the desired manner. Most of them can be classified into two categories, hardware and software reasons. These reasons are discussed in the subsequent parts of this article:

• Hardware reasons: These occur when the PST is unable to store or transfer the data due to hardware problems. Some of them are:

  • Faulty networking device: If the PST file is on a network and there are some problems while accessing the network, then the PST file may get corrupt.

  • Power failure: If the power goes off when you are using Outlook, then the PST file may get corrupt.

  • Failure in the data storage device: If the hard disk contains some bad sectors and the PST is contained in some of these, then the PST file would get corrupt.

• Software reasons: At times, the PST file can get damaged due to software related issues. Some of them are:

  • Virus infections: Some malicious software may damage the PST file thereby making it inaccessible.

  • Bugs in application version: Due to deficiencies in the Outlook version, some bugs may cause PST corruption.

  • Outlook exiting abruptly: Some incompatibility issues may cause Outlook to exit suddenly, which results in almost same reason as the 'Power failure' point.

Resolution:

If the PST file has got damaged due to any of these discussed reasons, then you should use the Inbox Repair (Scanpst.exe) tool to repair PST file. In addition, if you have encountered the “2 GB problem”, then you should also use the “2 GB Truncation” utility to crop the overgrown PST file by about 20-25 MB followed by the Inbox Repair tool.

However, if the Outlook PST file is not repaired using the Inbox Repair tool, then you should use a third-party pst recovery software to do the needful. These Outlook Recovery tools ensure that no data is lost while preforming the data recovery.

The most used pst recovery tool is Stellar Phoenix Outlook PST Recovery, which recovers PST files created for MS Outlook 2010, 2007, 2003, 2002, and 2000. Capable of repairing several objects, this pst recovery software is compatible with Windows 7, Vista, Server 2003, XP, and 2000.