Corrupt Entourage Database? Woe is me.

[chrismilk]

Hi,

My Entourage 2008 Database hates me. I'm worried this may be due to
inadvertently opening 2004 while 2008 was running. What happened was
I had a calender invite that i tried to drag into the 2008 icon in the
dock but nothing happened. So i control-clicked it and "open with"
one of the 2 entourages listed there (I'm worried it was 2004). It
quickly opened another pink "E" at the end of my dock and then
disappeared. Didn't seem like anything was wrong then a couple hours
later the whole computer locked up. When i opened up entourage after
a restart it said "Entourage cannot open the item due to an error. -
not enough memory" in one window and "Database daemon fatal error -
unknown error" in another.

Tried to rebuild the Database and it gets 3/4 through pass 1 and
stops with "an error occurred while trying to verify your database".

On a side note my pop-up office reminders are still functioning and
letting me of impending things on my calender. If i could only see my
calender now.

I've killed all database daemons running and removed them from the
start-up menu. I've thrown away all the preferences and caches i can
think of. Run Disk utility. Restarted. I'm still in the same boat.

I have 53 gig avail on the hard drive. My database is 15 gigs. I get
an error -0 when i try to duplicate it. this has been happening for
more than 6 months. Even when i try to clone the drive it won't copy
the database. Hence i don't have any recent back-ups of it.

Any help I'd be eternally grateful. I'm seeing my life passing before
my eye as i write this.

Thanks,
Chris

 

[Diane Ross]

If Entourage 2008 was updated from the original, you can run both versions
at the same time. Your errors do indicate database corruption. I suspect
that the 53 GB you have is not enough to rebuild. You need a min of 10%
drive space for breathing room. A 15 GB database has to be copied thus you
need 30GB plus the 10%.

Can you open the Identity? If yes, you can manually move your data out. If
not, then you can get a large drive and try rebuilding. I've been able to do
this for people that do not have the expertise and the drive space. See this
article on how this works.

Rebuilding a damaged database that exceeded size limit

<http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/2007/09/rebuilding_a_damaged_database_that_e
xceeded_size_limit.html>

In case the above link does not work:

<http://tinyurl.com/4s6qv3>

Hope this helps!

 

[chrismilk]

Thanks Diane. I got the big hard drive, carbon copy cloned everything
over, and used that as the start-up disk. This time it WOULD rebuild
my database! Thank you so much for that.

The rebuilt database has about 95% of my original stuff in it.
Calender and contacts seem intact. But my inbox only has 4 emails in
it when before it had 50 (50 yet to be answered ones unfortunately).
Also the 2 personal email folders i had short cuts to in the toolbar
are completely gone. I did throw away those entourage preferences
before when i was trying to fix the original problem. Is there
anything else i can do to try and find these missing emails and email
folders?

Thank you so much again for getting me this far.

Best,
Chris

 

[Diane Ross]

Thanks Diane. I got the big hard drive, carbon copy cloned everything
over, and used that as the start-up disk. This time it WOULD rebuild
my database! Thank you so much for that.

Glad to know that worked for you. What size was the new database?

The rebuilt database has about 95% of my original stuff in it.
Calender and contacts seem intact. But my inbox only has 4 emails in
it when before it had 50 (50 yet to be answered ones unfortunately).
Also the 2 personal email folders i had short cuts to in the toolbar
are completely gone. I did throw away those entourage preferences
before when i was trying to fix the original problem. Is there
anything else i can do to try and find these missing emails and email
folders?

Were you able to open the old Identity? If yes, then you can just
individually drag out those messages. You could try the MBOX or Entourage
archive (.rge) file, but if the inbox is corrupted they will fail. Usually
individual files can be dragged.

I wouldn't worry about the preferences. They can all be recreated.

Thank you so much again for getting me this far.

Glad I could help. BTW, what size is your database after the rebuild? If
it's still large (over 10GB) I would consider archiving your older mail.

See this page for help archiving your data.

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/database/archive.html>

 

[chrismilk]

Diane, thanks.

The original Database was 14.93 gb. The new database once rebuilt is
9.63 gb. Keep in mind though there is a bunch of stuff missing.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say

Were you able to open the old Identity? If yes, then you can just
individually drag out those messages.

Excuse my ignorance. I'm not sure what you mean by "original
identity". I have a bad database on my original laptop drive. I have
carbon copy cloned the whole drive over to a new giant external drive
and used that as the start up (The original bad Database will not copy
over on its own solo because it says the file is damaged). Using the
carbon copy cloned external drive i rebuild the Database of the main
identity. I open entourage with this new rebuilt database and many
emails and email folders are missing. Isn't that the "original
identity" that i just rebuild and now have a rebuilt version of? Or
is the "original identity" something other than the actual database
file?

thanks so much.

Chris

 

[Diane Ross]

The original Database was 14.93 gb. The new database once rebuilt is
9.63 gb. Keep in mind though there is a bunch of stuff missing.

9.63 GB is still a bit large. Just to see what empty holes are, try
exporting your Identity as an Entourage archive (.rge) file. Compare it's
size to the database. You'll be surprised at the difference.

Having the "extra" space is not all bad, since the wasted space is used up
with new data as it is added. This way, over a period of time (assuming that
you are deleting stuff as you go) the database will probably reach an
optimum size, after which the stuff you delete is roughly equal to the stuff
you add, and no further growth takes place.

You might not have lost as much data as you think.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say


Excuse my ignorance. I'm not sure what you mean by "original
identity". I have a bad database on my original laptop drive. I have
carbon copy cloned the whole drive over to a new giant external drive
and used that as the start up (The original bad Database will not copy
over on its own solo because it says the file is damaged). Using the
carbon copy cloned external drive i rebuild the Database of the main
identity. I open entourage with this new rebuilt database and many
emails and email folders are missing. Isn't that the "original
identity" that i just rebuild and now have a rebuilt version of? Or
is the "original identity" something other than the actual database
file?

Take the file that was copied over during the clone. (That's the original)
Does it open? If yes, then you can manually move over files.

I'm wondering if your laptop has a bad sector on the drive where your
database was written. I would run utilities on the drive before trying to
use it just to be safe.