Best way to backup an Outlook pst-file?

[Wolters]

What backup options are ideal for backing up a pst-file with Super Flexible? I guess that I should, in some way or another take into account that Outlook might be open and might be accessing the pst-file while the automatic backup is running?

As I once got a corrupt pst-file which was impossible to get back, I thought that it might be a good thing to keep a couple of "older" versions as well of the pst-file, should the latest be found corrupt. I guess this can be done by using the versioning option in Super Flexible, right?

Thanks!

Dag

[superflexible]

There are various ways, depending on how large your file is and how much space you want to use for older versions.

Assuming that space is not a problem, you can just choose to keep a certain number of older versions on the "Versioning" tab sheet.

If Outlook is open and the PST file is locked, Superflexible will use Volume Shadowing to copy it. There is only one prerequisite for this to work: the program must be running on the same machine where the PST file is stored.
You can try it out, usually it should be no problem to back up the PST file while Outlook is running.

If you do need to save space and want to keep several older versions, you can use the Synthetic Backup feature, which is the second tab sheet of the Versioning options. This will combine Partial File Updating, Versioning, and Zipping. However it adds some complexity to the process, so I would only use it if needed. It will store the changed blocks in a new, separate zip file each time you run the job. Upon restoring, the original file will be reassembled from several zip files. The number of these zip files can become quite high, and you need to keep them all. But the program will automatically clean up older zip files which are no longer needed, based on the Synthetic Backup settings.