Advantages of the New Storage Engine for Outlook 2007

If you have a mailbox on a Microsoft Exchange server, you probably find it very convenient to use Microsoft Outlook 2007 in the Cached Exchange mode and have content available in the form of offline folders (OST files). Outlook 2007 uses a powerful internal storage engine to process these cached Exchange folders (OST files). In order to improve the performance of Outlook, Microsoft now provides a service pack that installs a storage engine that has been completely redesigned and boasts of many improvements. One of the biggest changes in Outlook 2007 SP2 is that this storage engine has been redesigned and boasts of many improvements. Not only is the general performance of Outlook 2007 speeded up but there is also greater protection for OST file from getting corrupted and requiring exchange recovery.

There are two points that you should be aware of if you are planning on installing the service pack of Outlook 2007. First, Outlook will rebuild all the OST files so that all the OST data will now be in the new file structure that was introduced in the redesigned storage engine. This may increase the size of the OST files. While the increase may not be much, if your OST file is already approaching 2 GB, then when you install the SP2, it may just cross 2 GB. It is possible that the extra space being taken up by the new file structure causes you concern and that you prefer to use the previous file structure of Outlook. You can certainly configure Outlook to use the old file structure and not use the newly designed one. However, this will mean that you will lose out on any improvements in performance the new file structure would have brought about.

Secondly, for some time after installation, the new service pack may appear to have slowed down the performance of Outlook 2007. Some users actually suspect that their OST files have become damaged during installation and may try a quick exchange recovery! However, the reason behind this dip in performance is that Outlook has to rebuild all the OST files of the user. This typically takes several hours and if you are using Outlook during this process, you may sense a slowdown in the performance. However, once the service pack has finished rebuilding, there is a noticeable improvement in the performance of Outlook. Sometimes though, the rebuilding may affect the integrity of the OST files. If you suspect that the OST files have become corrupted either before or during the installation of the service pack, you may need to carry out an exchange recovery. Use Advanced exchange recovery from DataNumen to recover all the data from the damaged OST files and continue working on them without any problem.

Finally, a quick word on how the new file structure helps improve the performance of Outlook. First, data is now written much closer; during read and write operations, the disk head does not have to move as much reducing hardware problems. Response times are speeded up leading to an improvement in overall performance. The internal storage engine also interacts more efficiently with the disk-write caches causing less corruption in the OST files.