I have a drive that is here which was being defragmented when a power outage happened. When the system came back online, apparently, the outlook.pst file was gone. I have yet to assess this project, but am curious to know if anyone else has encountered a similar situation and what you think the odds are for getting the full file back in one piece.

I'm going to run a few scans with our usual recovery software arsenal, before going forward with RAW and manual methods.

Thoughts? Wagers and bets?

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

in ms office there is scanpst.exe file this will repair ur pst file search it

Okay...nice thought. But, that would be assuming that the PST file is there to scan. The client's technicians already helped the situation by installing a bunch of PST repair programs on the hard drive and run them. Before we do that, we need more than a simple 0MB file to work with.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

I suppose I could mirror the drive to an image file with a PST extension, then run a PST repair on the 40GB image file. I'd hate to see how long that process would take. But it would be fun to try.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

for me you have to image the drive then perform a RAW scan for .pst signature file(s) and then work on them. It is the longest but safest way.

I've already gone to the RAW search and have had some luck with the first attempt. It found 4 PST files that I'm repairing and getting some data. I'm not, by any stretch of the imagination done, but at least I can justify quoting the client something.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

Honestly if the defrag was in the middle of moving the pst file or splitting it into pieces or putting pieces back together there's no telling. Even if/when you do find the beginning of the file it could potentially be split into pieces all over the drive. In that scenario I can't even conceive of a theoretical method of successfully retrieving it.

I guess you could start by analyzing a functional PST to see what it is supposed to look like at the beginning, end, and places in the middle.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

The last hope is that there is a "working" even if rather old PST file left from previous defrag or copy in the unused space... Or you have to assemble pieces from different PST file fragments. This case falls in the data reconstruction category more than in DR.

Do you use FTK or EnCase? If you can't get the PST files rebuilt, you can at least cave out all the e-mails and data in the PST one by one...

You are not the only one who experiences such a bummer. A sudden black out while in the middle of defragmentation really bites. Anyway, if your defragmentation program was transferring an important file the moment the power went out, such file can become corrupted. So, if you cannot get a reliable power supply before you try defragmenting, you may at least run a check disk on your computer.

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how to defragment hard drive

This thread is nearly 2 years old.
I'm sure Luke has long since finished this recovery.

I cannot be sure, but I do believe that I was successful, too. It is funny how old posts come out of the woodwork from time to time.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery