Entourage X rebuild problems

  • Thread starter Bernhard Pieber
  • Start date
B

Bernhard Pieber

(I also posted this on the Entourage-Talk mailing list. I hope this is OK.)

The Problem:

I am having a serious problem with my mail database. I cannot access the
data and rebuilding does not work. To make things worse the last backup was
made on June 13th, which I hate to admit. There has been important mail
communication since then which I would really, really hate to loose.
Therefore, I would be most thankful for any help on how to solve my problem!

The Details:

I am running the latest version of Entourage X on Mac OS X 10.2.6 with
Office v. X 10.1.3. My database is already fairly big, it has 2.28 GB
(2.453.017.424 Bytes). I read that the maximum size can be 4 GB so it should
still work.

Three days ago Entourage stopped working. On starting it shows the following
error, without an error number:
"Accessing the data is not possible. Perhaps the problem can be solved by
rebuilding the database."
After pressing OK I get:
"To rebuild the database quit all other Microsoft Office applications and
try it again."
(I am translating these from German so the English error messages probably
are somewhat different.)

I did not find the error on http://www.entourage.mvps.org. I quit Entourage
X and start a Typical Rebuild. I see a progress bar from 0 to 10220,
probably the total number of my mails. After 1 minute progress is on 200.
There it stays around 5 minutes. The new database grows to 3.23 GB. I
checked that in the Finder. After 9 minutes I get the following error, again
without an error number:
"The database could not be rebuilt, because there is not enough space left
to create the new database files."
Actually, I have 15.7 GB of free space on the hard disk. I assume that the 4
GB limit was reached. When I look in the Finder the new database was deleted
again and I still have my database with 2.28 GB.

I tried an Advanced Rebuild. First it does some preparation, the progress
bar goes from 0 to 10220. Then it does compaction. The progress bar from 0
to 10220 is on 1400 after 1 minute. There it says for quite some time. The
new database grows from 1 GB to 3.9 GB (4.193.139.408 bytes) in 11 minutes.
After 13 minutes the progress moves from 1400 to 2700. After 14 minutes I
get the following message:
"The database was rebuilt. The old versions of the database files were
renamed to Old Database and Old Database Cache. They can be moved to the
trash."
After pressing OK I get:
"The storage limit of the Entourage database was reached. The Entourage
database can save up to 4 Gigabyte (GB) of information. This limit is now
reached. Compact the database by doing a Typical Rebuild."
The new database has 4 GB (4.294.967.280 Bytes, 16 bytes less than the full
4 GB).
Entourage prompts me for a rebuild.

I do a Typical Rebuild again. It starts compacting the database, again from
0 to 10220. It stays at 1300 for 13 minutes. Then there is a second progress
bar named "compacting and optimizing email" from 0 to 1288. After 14 minutes
the following message is shown:
"The database was rebuilt. The old versions of the database files were
renamed to Old Database and Old Database Cache. They can be moved to the
trash."
Entourage X opens but does not show my identity but the main identity. When
I switch to my identity I get the message:
"The storage limit of the Entourage database was reached. The Entourage
database can save up to 4 Gigabyte (GB) of information. This limit is now
reached. Compact the database by doing a Typical Rebuild."
The database has now 3.99 GB (4.292.677.552 bytes).

I tried doing a Typical Rebuild again without success.

When I open Entourage X I get the message:
"The storage limit of the Entourage database was reached. The Entourage
database can save up to 4 Gigabyte (GB) of information. This limit is now
reached. Compact the database by doing a Typical Rebuild."
Then it prompts me to do a rebuild. If I say cancel I get the follwing error
message, without an error number:
"Error during startup. Message error."

The questions:

1. Why does the rebuild try to grow my database from 2.28 GB to 4 GB so that
the storage limit is reached?
2. Why does it say there is too little space on my disk if I have 15.7 GB
free?
3. Does anyone have an idea what else I could try?
4. Can anyone please provide me documentation about the file format of the
Entourage X database? I am a programmer myself and could write a program to
save my mails if I had this information.
5. What might be the reason for the first error message in the first place?
("Accessing the data is not possible. Perhaps the problem can be solved by
rebuilding the database.") I did not make any unusual observations like
message errors before.

The speculations:

I wildly guess that there is some error in the rebuild. Maybe there is some
corrupt message so that Entourage reads over its end and thinks it is huge.
The rebuild staying that long at one place and the database growing to
almost twice the size seems to support that assumption.
Perhaps the actual limit for the Entourage X database is not 4 GB but
actually somewhere at 2 GB due to the design of the rebuild process. In this
case it should be documented.

The pledge:

I would be really, really thankful if someone could provide me information
to fix this problem and get to my emails. If you need some additional
information from me or want me to try out things I will gladly do that. If
you can provide me with test programs which check my database for certain
error conditions I am willing to run them. If you provide me with
information about the file format I will help debugging the problem.

Thank you for your patience and support!

Kind regards,
Bernhard Pieber
 

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