Corrupted Database
October 19, 2005 10:47 AM   Subscribe

I'm using Entourage (yes I know) and somehow my Database has become corrupted. My last backup is over a week old. I tried rebuilding the database, advance rebuild, and none worked (read/write error -40). Help?
posted by ig to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)
 
Response by poster: Sorry, using Mac OS X 10.4.1.
posted by ig at 10:55 AM on October 19, 2005


Looks like file corruption. You can try to run Disk Utility or fsck in single-user mode; the link explains how to do this.
posted by Rothko at 10:58 AM on October 19, 2005


Disk Utility won't fix a corrupted Entourage database if the file is corrupted internally, but it's true that error -40 does reflect a general inability to access files that may be caused by directory corruption rather than corruption inside the database itself. Disk Utility (or better, DiskWarrior) is worth a try in this case. I'm assuming you have Office 2004? Its database recovery tools are much better than the previous version's.
posted by kindall at 11:12 AM on October 19, 2005


Make sure you have *at least* as much free hard drive space as the size of the entire database when you try the rebuilds. Double is better. Also, you might see, first, how big your database is, and second, if it's just at 2GB, then dig around the various help forums to see if there's still a problem with a 2GB limit on the database size. There used to be, but I would hope it was resolved before now.
posted by Mo Nickels at 12:10 PM on October 19, 2005


What version of Entourage are you using? There is a program called EntourAid that will repair corrupted databases for version X. It mainly fixed corruption due to that 2gb limit bug but current versions of Entourage got rid of that limit. For a fee you can send him your corrupted database and he can repair it himself. But if nothing else just email the guy for advice. He gave me some good pointers when my database went ca-ca-doo-doo...
posted by sammich at 4:38 PM on October 19, 2005


Response by poster: Big thanks to everyone who replied. I tried fsck and disk utility. No luck. I think my problem was caused by a recent series of messages with huge attachments which made my database go over the 2gb limit. I'm using my (5 day old) backup for now but *really* appreciate all the help.
posted by ig at 5:11 PM on October 19, 2005


BTW, if you're going to back up your database only once a week, set Entourage to leave messages on your POP server for a week, or else use IMAP. (If you use the calendar, address book, and notes a lot, then I recommend daily backups.)
posted by kindall at 5:19 PM on October 19, 2005


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