Outlook Data Location

[Velvis]

I have a new client and 2 of the 20 or so employees have their Outlook data file mapped to a shared drive on the server. Email is hosted offsite.

Any idea why this might have been done?

Any reason not to move it to the local machine? (local machine is backed up)

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Some almost sorta wanna-be computer savvy people think they're doing a smart thing by putting it on a "server"...because *a server is usually more reliable than a local workstation, less likely to crash. And/or the server is being backed up..thus the PSTs are being backed up.

The problem is...Outlook has a VERY resource intensive connection to its database..the PST. It's not designed to be run across a network. Microsoft even tells you' it's not supported and not a good thing to do.

So when people do this...i
*Itcauses frequent Outlook issues on the workstation
*Adds quite a bit of traffic on the network.
*It puts a crazy load of disk i/O on the server
*The PSTs are rarely backed up successfully because of Outlooks tons of open file handles on it..so come restore time..heh..."boom"!

Yeah..just "Don't do it!"

 

[Velvis]

Thank you. Just wanted to double check that there might have been an important reason someone did it previously that I might want to consider before moving it locally. Thanks again!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[Markverhyden]

Outlook, in reality, is a database program. Database programs do not work very well over networked shares unless they are designed for that.

 

[Sky-Knight]

I have yet to see an Outlook from version 2007 on up that works properly with the .pst beyond a UNC path. You end up with a ton of read/write errors in and out of that file, even if the hosting server is an SSD equipped IO monster.

It's simply not supported to do that. If you want a remote PST for backup, the official answer is to use an Exchange server. And you can forget backing up a .pst, nothing ever works properly. You cannot VSS off a copy, and you cannot usually ensure outlook.exe is closed before the backup runs.

Again the official answer is to use an Exchange server. =/

So to answer your question, it was done because someone didn't know any better, and you're now there looking at something that shouldn't have ever worked.

 

[glennd]

Check if there isn't some ancient proxy type program running on the server that is doing the email download and populating the pst files. Check if they're running POP3 or IMAP.

 

[callthatgirl]

I agree with Brian, some techs and corporations do that with the PST, seen it for many years. Back in the day at old corp jobs, the PST was in their H: drive! lol. I can't tell you how many calls I got for remapping that H drive.

be sure to back up the OST files in your backup. Phisers are getting into accounts and deleting everything now. If you have an OST backup, you can convert to a PST and import back in pretty easy. I'm looking to Backupify right now to sell also.