Outlook Expresss- where is the mail , really?

Dave Van Allen · Post by **Dave Van Allen** » 9 May 2001 5:52 pm

I have hundreds of e-mails in my inbox, but where are these hidden on my hard drive?

I would like to archive them so I can replace my Hard drive (for an unrelated reason) and then get my mail back when I reload win98se and Outlook express on the new drive.

any suggestions on how to back these up?

Jim Smith · Post by **Jim Smith** » 9 May 2001 6:08 pm

I use Outlook on Windows 2000, but I believe the file is the same. Mine are called Outlook.pst and archive.pst. If you do a search for *.pst you should find them.

You can either do File-Import and Export and export your email to a file, then import them on your new installation, or just copy the .pst files to the same directory on your new drive.

Dave Van Allen · Post by **Dave Van Allen** » 9 May 2001 6:32 pm

well thanks, Jim, but that wasn't the filename I finally found 'em under... it's "inbox.dbx"
in the directory path fom hell:

c:\windows\application data\~gobbledygook~\microsoft\outlook express\inbox.dbx

actually there's a *.dbx file for each folder in the mailprogram (if you sort your mail like I do by subject and or sender)YIKES!

I'll just back up the directory- 46 MB worth...

thanks anyway for the prompt reply!!
we can close this one now I guess...

Craig Allen · Post by **Craig Allen** » 9 May 2001 9:09 pm

Dave, are you currently running Windows 98??
If so, I don't believe an upgrade will toast your files.

When you get to the part of the install that askes you if you want to save current settings/system files, select yes.

If this isn't gonna hapen, I'll do a little research and tell ya later where they are. Rite now I'm trying to find a dad-gum modem that I know is here, and the drivers are in, but it just won't find it no matter what i try, so I'll check back after a while

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 10 May 2001 2:23 am

Dave, I just upgraded my hard drive. I copied the entire drive using the Western Digital installation diskette that came with the new drive.

What I did was temporarily disconnect the CD reader and use the power and I/O bus cable for the new hard drive. "Installed" it and configured it using the Western Digital installation diskette. Then another function on the diskette was a mass copy of everything on my old drive to the new drive. Once everything was copied over, I disconnected the new drive, reconnected the CD reader and physically replaced the old hard drive with the new. Rebooted and everything came up "normal" but using the new hard drive.

The Western Digital diskette is called "Data Lifeguard Tools" and can be downloaded from the Western Digital site. It's actually a handy diskette to have around as it has several disk utilities on it, and will work with other drives not just Western Digital.

One quirk, it uses DR-DOS - haven't seen that for ages and thought it had gone away.

Dave Van Allen · Post by **Dave Van Allen** » 10 May 2001 5:04 am

Thanks guys...
I appreciate that I can transfer my current drive contents to a new drive, and in the past on this machine that is what I have done. using Data Lifeguard, in fact...

This is the machine I need to dedicate to use as a DAW (digtal audio workstation) and contrary to my own best judgement I have gradually overloaded it with other swiss army tasks to the point my Cakewalk broke... so in order to make it do what I need it to I want to do a "clean install" from scratch on the new drive ; fresh system s/w and device drivers, updates etc, reinstall critical applications, get it to where it does the best it can at audio/MIDI tasks and then leave it alone.
(fortunately most of my music related DATA is on another drive in the system... the drive in question holds Windows and Program files)

The ideal would be that I can move my archived mail to another PC that I will dedicate to internet and other tasks.

eventually I hope to buy/build a new more powerful PC dedicated to audio, but gotta make do with what I got fer now.