Can "lost" emails be retrieved?

[humbersloop]

For business purposes, working in Outlook, I need to keep a lot of emails and their attachments. My email is well organised in relevant folders and, because of the volume, was regularly backed up and archived.

We've recently had a catastrophe with a new server installation, that took our entire system out for days. On recovery, it seems no back up or archiving had been done on my mailbox for about the last 18 months. As a result, all my contacts content has been lost and I've had to start again building my folder system. That's a pain, but can be done.

Is there any way I can get the "lost" emails back - our teccies are saying no, and that some sort of forensic data recovery would cost a fortune.

Sorry this is lengthy. Any suggestions or thoughts would be gratefully received, thanks.

[Prudie]

This is waay over my head humber but have you really pressed the techies? I only ask because at my 'place' all back-ups are also stored on tapes.

[MarkRae]

You can't conjure data out of thin air! Presumably, when you talk of Outlook and "server installation", you mean that the copy of Outlook installed on your workstation was acting as an email client to your company's Exchange Server. As such, by default, your whole mailbox would have resided on the server. If it's gone, it's gone.

Might you have configured it to keep a copy of things locally? If not, your only option is the expensive data recovery...

[ChuckFickens]

Not really enough info to answer... what sort of mail server was it and what protocol was being used on your computer.

If it was POP3 then you should have a PST file of your computer that will contain all your mails.

If it was an exchange server then you may have an OST file on your computer (depends if cached exchange mode was being used) which will contain your emails (although if it was exchange they most have server backups otherwise the exchange logs never get cleared and fill the server hard drive up very quickly)

If it wa s IMAP then everything was on the server.

Sounds like you need new techies at work though if they didn't have backups!

[humbersloop]

Trying to prudie, but they cocked up big style and are being defensively unhelpful.

Bear with me Mark, this is really not my field, but yes, I think we had the arrangement you describe with my mail box on the server, so it sounds like I'm stuffed.

How expensive is expensive?

[ChuckFickens]

"but they cocked up big style"

If it was/is an exchange server I'll say they cocked up big style!... having working backups of the exchange mail databases isn't just a good idea, it's a requirement of having an exchange install otherwise the server will run out of hard drive space and eventually fail.

If not having a working backup is what caused the problem then the "techies" should be shot for firstly allowing the problem to happen in the first place and secondly for not being able to fix the problem while retaining all data... it's not a difficult failure to fix.

Losing 18months of emails is inexcusable! I'd be out of a job instantly for far lesser cockups than that!

The data recovery MR is referring to would likely cost in the region of several thousands of pounds.

[humbersloop]

Er, they're shortly to become our ex-techies chuck, although in fairness, it seems different arrangements were made for backing up my stuff because of the exchange server volume issue you mention, which weren't passed on with a personnel change 18 months ago.

I understand it was an exchange server, but the new one they tried to install seems to have knocked the old one out completely. I'll ask about the PST/OST files though.

Is data recovery even a possibility then?

Thanks for your patience

[humbersloop]

cross posted there chuck, that's what happened it seems.

Hell, we could run to a grand for recovery, but more is beyond our reach. That's so bloody frustrating

[MarkRae]

> I understand it was an exchange server, but the new one they tried to install seems to have knocked the old one out completely.

That puzzles me. Servers can "knock each other out"... You talk of a new server installation and, reading between the lines, the reason for this new server would appear to be a catastrophic failure with the HARDWARE of the previous one. If that is indeed the case and it is no longer functioning, then it would simply have been disconnected from the network.

Presumably, it's still sitting in the server room powered down and your company is debating the value in sending its hard drives away for data recovery...?

[humbersloop]

From what you and chuck are describing Mark, we've had a sequence of bodges over time and the worst's come to the worst.

I'm by no means a "blame the techie" person, but I'm sure no jury would convict me for what I'm contemplating at the moment.

Thank you for your help though x

[ChuckFickens]

Sounds like the "teccies" are nowhere near competent enough to be administering exchange.

If the mailbox server data has been lost somehow (I'm still shaking my head in disbelief about anybody just losing that much data!) then in my opinion your best hope to reasonably quickly get your own mails back is going to be, hope that cached exchange mode was left enabled in your outlook which would create a local copy of your mailbox on your computer as an OST file.

if you are using XP the default location for the file is
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\ Local Settings\Application Data\ Microsoft\ Outlook\

If you are using windows7 (or vista I think) it will be
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\O
utlook


If there is a file in there with the same name as your old mail profile and an .ost file extension that says it's an outlook data file (with a last modified date of when you last had access to your lost mail, as there might well be a second, newer one that relates to your new mail profile) then you're in with a chance...

You can't do anything directly with a .OST file, but there are utilities available that will convert it to a .PST file that can then either be opened directly from outlook, or imported back into your mailbox.

[humbersloop]

bless ((chuck)), thank you.

I'll give that a go, although I'm a bit close to resigned despair now. It's also caused all sorts of other problems that I won't bore you with. It's the commercial info that's the bother.

grumbles, its not unreasonable to pay specialists and expect them to do their firkin' job, is it

[boxtops]

sloopy I sympathise - we lost loads of vital data a few years back when our main server went down, and unbeknown to us the backup server was smaller than the main one - all it saved was file titles, no contents :-(

[humbersloop]

ta boxy x

[ChuckFickens]

Boxy.... I do regular partial test restores of our backups to make sure they can be restored properly just to ensure that sort of situation should never happen. the saying is "a backup is not a backup until it's been tested"

[humbersloop]

^chuck, if I do what I'm contemplating come Monday, will you be a character witness? ;-)

[ChuckFickens]

If you didn't live the other end of the country I might be working out a consultant's fee at the moment ;)

[humbersloop]

and I might contemplate paying it! I'm fretting about what they've done to "fix" it now, and losing the will to live.

We're moving to a cloud-based system next week, apparently, and using shared dropboxes

[jamxyz123]

If lost you email or not working outlook . You can try third party Outlook PST Repair Tool and recover PST file. For more information http://www.outlookpstrepairtools.n.nu