Pst file backup question

ATI 2021 can backup *.pst files, but not *.ost files.

From your description it appears that you are doing a files and folders backup, is that correct? In my experience you would have to use the full path when defining the backup. Unfortunately I do not fully understand the mechanism for files and folders backup, and how that relates to the way *.pst files are structured. There is nothing in the ATI documentation explaining  the the process used to backup *.pst files.

Ian

My question is, would acronis be able to detect the daily changes within the pst file whenever there are new mails added onto it? Would the addition of these new mails be reflected in the daily incremental backups?

The answer here will depend on several factors:

1. That the Outlook .PST file is actually included in your backup task source.  Open the Recovery panel for the task and try to find the .PST file to ensure it has already been being backed up.
    
2. That when the backup task is being run, that Outlook is not open and locking the .PST file to prevent it from being accessed for the backup task.
   Note: any changes made by Outlook to the file may be kept in memory while the application is open rather than written to the disk copy of the .PST file, so such changes would not be captured as were not contained in the file.

IanL-S wrote:

ATI 2021 can backup *.pst files, but not *.ost files.

From your description it appears that you are doing a files and folders backup, is that correct? In my experience you would have to use the full path when defining the backup. Unfortunately I do not fully understand the mechanism for files and folders backup, and how that relates to the way *.pst files are structured. There is nothing in the ATI documentation explaining  the the process used to backup *.pst files.

Ian

Hi Ian,

Thanks for your feedback. Yes, I am doing a files and folder backup. Basically I have the 'email' location in Outlook set to a folder situated in the Documents folder, and I have the documents folder selected to be backed up. 

Do you think it would be safer just to do a 'full' backup of the pst file each time rather than incremental backups?

Steve Smith wrote:

My question is, would acronis be able to detect the daily changes within the pst file whenever there are new mails added onto it? Would the addition of these new mails be reflected in the daily incremental backups?

The answer here will depend on several factors:

1. That the Outlook .PST file is actually included in your backup task source.  Open the Recovery panel for the task and try to find the .PST file to ensure it has already been being backed up.
    
2. That when the backup task is being run, that Outlook is not open and locking the .PST file to prevent it from being accessed for the backup task.
   Note: any changes made by Outlook to the file may be kept in memory while the application is open rather than written to the disk copy of the .PST file, so such changes would not be captured as were not contained in the file.

Hello again Steve,

Thanks for sharing your feedback.

1. The pst file is selected as a backup source. I've changed the pst file location to a folder in my documents which is backup to the cloud. I can also see the pst file in acronis cloud.

2.Thanks for the hint, I'll make sure outlook is closed prior to the daily backups.
 

Cowletable wrote:

 

Do you think it would be safer just to do a 'full' backup of the pst file each time rather than incremental backups?

Incremental backup should be OK so long as the backup chain is not large. Say a full backup and 6 incremental backups.

The only thing I cannot work out is if any space is saved by doing an incremental backup - this would be premised on ATI being able to isolate those parts of the *.pst file that have changed since the last backup was run.

Steve's point about having closed outlook is one I had forgotten about (another seniors moment). 

Ian

One problem with using Acronis for outlook files is that Outlook changes the file every time it launches, even if there are no change in email, calendar, etc. data. For example, if you keep around some pst archive files that are open in Outlook, these files will be eligible for incremental backups every time you use Outlook, even if no item is changed in these files. In my case, this resulted in huge and long incremental backups.

Unfortunately, there is no difference between using a disk level backup vs a file level backup, because in both cases Acronis leverages the file system information to determine which information (sector or file) to backup.

I ended up excluding pst files from Acronis incremental backups altogether, used only OST files for current email, moved the archive PST files to another disk (to avoid huge incremental system images), and used a dedicated full image backup for the partittion using these files.

Also be aware that PST files are relatively fragile. if you want to preserve emails for posterity, you should consider exporting your emails to other searchable formats like PDF. Some tools do a good job converting each email to PDF and keep the association with attachments (not converted to PDF).

Thanks Ian and Pat for your feedback!

Since my mails are via POP3 and not IMAP, outlook uses PST files to store my mails (not OST).

I guess I shall continue with that status quo and maintain the incremental backups as before - and basically enforce that my outlook client is closed prior to the start of the back.