Rebuild on 6.5Gb fails. What's next

[sparker]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel Email Client: pop A friend of mine who's using Entourage 2008 is having problems. She thought it was being backed up by Time Machine, and we all know what that means (that the identify it never get's backed up).

I've tried running the repair, both before and after a "repair permissions" and that didn't work. Repair still fails after about an hour.

Mac Intel Core 2 Duo
3Gb Memory
200Gb drive
90Gb free
6.5Gb Database file in "Main Identity" folder.

Does anybody know of any "external tools", commercial or freeware, that might let her recover any of her data.

I'm likely going to recommend that her entire organization dump Entourage completely, as we cannot risk this ever happening again, and without a decent way to backup incremental data, I can't recommend this as a real, business class product.

 

[Diane Ross]

90Gb free
6.5Gb Database file in "Main Identity" folder.

90GB might not be enough free space. see this article:

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

I've had great success with my clients using a drive with 500 GB free.

Does anybody know of any "external tools", commercial or freeware, that
might let her recover any of her data.

You could try EmailChemy for messages.

I'm likely going to recommend that her entire organization dump
Entourage completely, as we cannot risk this ever happening again, and
without a decent way to backup incremental data, I can't recommend this
as a real, business class product.

I would switch them to IMAP or get a hosted Exchange account.

there are ways to backup incremental data using custom mail view (like a
smart folder). See the backup articles for different options.

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/articles/backup_articles.html>

 

[sparker]

Since the corrupted file is already on a half-full 200Gb drive, and I didn't see any options on 'moving' or 'placing' the repaired file during the repair option, how would you suggest I go about moving the identity files to the &quot;500Gb drive&quot; option you mentioned? I'm assuming you mean &quot;go buy a 500Gb drive and plug it in via Firewire 800&quot;. But where do I go from there. How do I get the repair utility to utilize that new drive?

I'm still in awe that 90Gb free is not enough space to recover a 6.5Gb file. As a software engineer myself, I'm stunned by this revelation. That's an order of magnitude above any reasonable amount. I want to be sure are you sure 500Gb of free space will be enough space to recover 6.5Gb worth of data. Would it be better if I bought a 2Tb drive instead?

As for your IMAP and Hosted Exchange suggestion: There's no way I'm storing 6.5Gb x 20 users worth of IMAP data on a server, and no reason at all to buy Exchange, hosted or not. I'm likely going to be recommending that they convert their organization to GoogleApps as a future direction, and use AppleMail to read/store old messages locally in a file system that can be backed up properly.

 

[Diane Ross]

Since the corrupted file is already on a half-full 200Gb drive, and I
didn't see any options on 'moving' or 'placing' the repaired file during
the repair option, how would you suggest I go about moving the identity
files to the "500Gb drive" option you mentioned? I'm assuming you mean
"go buy a 500Gb drive and plug it in via Firewire 800". But where do I
go from there. How do I get the repair utility to utilize that new drive?

You have to install the Apple OS, Microsoft Office on the drive then
copy over the corrupted Identity folder. Boot from the drive and hold
down option key to select rebuild.

I'm still in awe that 90Gb free is not enough space to recover a 6.5Gb
file. As a software engineer myself, I'm stunned by this revelation.
That's an order of magnitude above any reasonable amount. I want to be
sure are you sure 500Gb of free space will be enough space to recover
6.5Gb worth of data. Would it be better if I bought a 2Tb drive instead?

It makes no sense to me either. I can only go on my experiences and
other user reports.