Forced shutdown causes corrupt database, can't be saved?

[Wes Plate]

Today my MacBook Pro got itself into a bad place and I had to force it
to shutdown and reboot. Upon relaunching Entourage I get the message
you just never want to see...

http://www.automaticduck.com/screenshots/EntourageError.jpg

Entourage cannot access your data. To attempt to fix the problem,
rebuild your database.


I let the database utility rebuild, but when Entourage came back up
entire folders were missing, and I was clearly missing loads of
email. Troublingly my original database is over 10GB, the new one was
over 4GB. So I started EntourAid on a copy of my database, but after
hours it has only recovered 43,000 messages and I know I had over
100,000 unread messages just in my deleted mail folder.

There HAS to be a way I can open this 10GB database file in a binary
editor and fix whatever the problem is. Or maybe I can bring the
database file to Redmond and someone on the Entourage team can help
bring the file back? What are my options?

 

[Allen Watson]

No promises, but to help at all, we'll need to know what version of
Entourage you are running. Be precise.

 

[Wes Plate]

Update on the EntourAid part of my story, Entourade actually ended up
dying shortly after I posted this message, it must have hit some
corrupt text because it wasn't able to parse what it needed and
aborted.

Based on the suggestion at http://www.entourage.mvps.org/database/corrupt.html
I am imagining doing a lot of text parsing to create MBOX files to
import. Is that my only hope?

 

[Wes Plate]

No promises, but to help at all, we'll need to know what version of
Entourage you are running. Be precise.

Sorry I failed to include that data point. 12.2.0 (090605)

 

[Diane Ross]

There HAS to be a way I can open this 10GB database file in a binary
editor and fix whatever the problem is. Or maybe I can bring the
database file to Redmond and someone on the Entourage team can help
bring the file back? What are my options?

It's possible you can rebuild on a drive with around 500GB free. I'm
assuming you have no backup?

What type of account? (POP, IMAP, Exchange)

Does the Identity open or just give you the error when you try to open?

I've been very successful doing recovery of databases if I have the database
BEFORE it was rebuilt. The copy that was made during the rebuild process can
be used, but it not as successful as a backup copy. Sorry but Redmond
doesn't do recovery.

Still need help? Send me an email:

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/support_options/email.html>

 

[Wes Plate]

Correct, no backup. I know, I know.

I am disappointed MS isn't interested in seeing failure cases such as
this, these kinds of examples of such drastic breakage are gold for
developers.

I have already contacted Diane and she's on he case win my file, but
so far she's seeing the same results front the rebuild utility that I
was seeing when I did the same thing.

 

[Wes Plate]

Just an update...

I rebuilt the database (size 4+GB) then used a combination of
Entouraid and a script to pull mail from the spotlight cache to create
"mbox" files of what mail could be recovered.

I have spent the morning moving mail from the imported folders into
their rightful homes and then I guess I did something unthinkable: I
did a search for some mail that I hoped was on my system and Boom! I
get an error that something has gone wrong with my database and
Entourage will now quit. Wha?! After all this? I tried relaunching
Entourage and I got the same error message I described at the
beginning of this saga, Entourage cannot access data.

I copied the new identity and database (now up to 16GB!!) to a faster
Mac where I'm now repairing via the repair utility.

Frustrating.