subject: How to Solve File Size Issue in the ANSI & Unicode PST File? [print this page] How to Solve File Size Issue in the ANSI & Unicode PST File?
ANSI vs. Unicode PST:Unicode PST, the default file format for PST files in newer Outlook versions (2003 and 2007), supports features like large PST file size (as large as 20 GB) and also supports different character sets. Support for varied character sets provides flexibility over the languages, while the latter one of 20 GB PST file size limitation is somewhat more important. Large size limit prevents the issues occurring due to exceeded file size limit, which unfortunately the case with ANSI PST 2GB file size limitation in older Outlook versions (2000 & 2002/XP).
PST File Size Issue in ANSI PST File: The 2GB limitation is imposed by ANSI (American National Standards Institute) PST. ANSI PST going over the 2 GB size limit is susceptible to corruption risk and various other issues that strongly establish the need to split PST file into smaller parts so as to reduce PST file size and prevent it from exceeding the 2 GB mark. Such problems are not there with Unicode PST.
PST File Size Issue with Unicode PST: Though, with Unicode PST file, you don't face the above-mentioned problem, but there are some other issues that occur with Unicode PST also, which are not similar to the ones faced with ANSI PST. No doubt, Unicode PST is best in enterprise environment as it is lesser prone to corruption than ANSI PST, but simultaneously, it raises many other issues and problems like the ones talked below:
You will experience poor performance with the presence of large sized Unicode PST files, as described in detail below:
o PST up to 2 GB size provides good usage experience
o PST between 2 and 4 GB size strictly depends on hardware
o PST above 4 GB size shows short pauses
o PST above 10 GB size faces very frequent pauses
Time consuming backup activity
Outlook handling and management issues
Foolproof Ways to Solve the Issues: A great precaution that you can take while storing the data in Outlook is to store the PST data in different PST files rather than focusing on a single PST file. This is a good practice to avoid the above mentioned issues. Also, you must always delete undesired messages from your PST files and you must also compact them later. Also, you can try PST archiving. Using a commercial tool to split PST is the best solution way in case your PST has increased largely in size. PCVITA Split Magic is a tool to split large sized PST files into smaller parts. This PST Split software will solve file size issue in ANSI PST file, and will also solve file size issue in Unicode PST file as the software supports both, older and newer version of Outlook. Split PST software is a great way to fix Unicode PST file size issue and to fix ANSI PST file size issue.
