Kurt123

I just spent the day doing a clean install of the OS on my dad's
computer. Despite my careful efforts to back up his Outlook 2003 emails, using two different methods to be in the safe side, all of them vanished,
right along with his faith in humanity, and my reputation as a decent
son.

"Um ... Dad ... how many emails did you have? Like, 50? 100?"

"Several thousand. At least."

"*!@$*!"

Before wiping things clean, I backed up his emails two ways. He had
about 10 emails in his Inbox (those were restored) and, according to
him, several thousand emails perfectly organized in a long series of
Inbox subfolders. Ah yes ... all those subfolders, containing all the
wonderful memories he has preserved since becoming a member of the
digital community 7 years ago ... all gone. Or are they?

I had backed up his emails two different ways:

1. Using The Files and Settings Transfer Wizard (which worked when it
came time to restore all his personal settings and My Documents
files). The wizard created three files:

- IMG00001.DAT (2,097,129 KB)
- IMG00002.DAT (88,714 KB)
- status (1 KB)

Shouldn't his Outlook emails be in one of these?

2. Exporting a backup of his .pst file to my thumb drive via Outlook's
Export option. When I got to the step to "Click the folder that
contains the messages you want to back up," I chose the Inbox folder
and *** distinctly remember checking the box next to *** "If the
folder contains a subfolder that you want to include, select the
"Include Subfolders" check box, and then click Next."

But after everything was partitioned, wiped cleaned, and reinstalled,
when I ran The Files and Settings Transfer Wizard, his My Doc files
and personal settings were restored but not his emails. So I imported the backup .pst file I created (in Outlook, File > Import &
Export ...) but the only thing that came back was the 10 measly emails in his main Inbox. There is no sign of his many subfolders and all those
millions of emails. Could they be locked somewhere in the .DAT files
created with the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard?

Any other way to recover his emails? Data recovery software? (I deleted then recreated the C: partition as part of the clean install.)

Should I go shopping for a new dad? Because I'm pretty sure my current
one has forsaken me. And rightly so.

Help?

djaburg

I'm afraid it's most likely a trip to Dads-are-us for you. It is REMOTELY possible that data recovery software could find the data, but having deleted the partition AND formatted the new one AND installed windows AND restored data on to it, typically means that your recovery options are quite small at this time. For future reference, the easiest way to back up e-mail data from outlook is to simply copy the .pst file to your thumb drive while in windows explorer. Running export typically sucks, and the files and settings wizard isn't fool-proof, as you now know. Sorry for the bad news, but if there is anything good to take from the experience, I bet you won't do that again.