If you are using a Microsoft Exchange server account, then you will have a far better experience of working with the server if you use the Cached Exchange Mode in your Outlook. While some versions of Outlook use this mode by default, in some you may have to set up the cached mode so that all your Exchange folders are available to you offline. When you use the cached exchange mode, Outlook will make a copy of the Exchange server mailbox, available to you locally. Then, you can continue working on this local copy without having to worry about losing the connection to the server and perhaps some of the important changes you may have made. Outlook stores these offline folder files as OST files and gives you continuous access to all your Exchange content. You may, at times, face situations where this offline folder gets damaged and you have to turn to recovery tools to recover OST files but more on that a little later.
Outlook always allows you to work with offline folders if there is no connection to the Exchange server or if the connection is lost. However, this would often mean lost time and lost data since a user might have been in the middle of making some important changes when the connection and hence the changes are lost. When you use the cached exchange mode, Outlook continues to work on the copy of the mailbox that is stored on the local workstation, even if there is a connection available. Having a local copy ensures that you have quick access to all your Exchange data and even if you do make changes, Outlook frequently synchronizes it with the mail server.
Despite these advantages, OST files do suffer from the fact that they are as susceptible to hardware and software failure as any other local file and very often a user may need to recover OST files using sophisticated recovery tools. One such simple, yet robust tool is Advanced Exchange Recovery. It has all the basic recovery features such as being able to restore all email messages, message properties, attachments and embedded objects. It also makes it possible to retrieve items from the 'Deleted Items' folder. Advanced Exchange Recovery can then save all these retrieved items in personal folders (PST files) that are easily read by Outlook and other compatible software.
Along with these, Advanced Exchange Recovery truly boasts of some very advanced features. Since the tool can restore fairly large OST files (of the order of a few terabytes) the resulting PST file also tends to be very large. Advanced Exchange Recovery splits this file into smaller files for ease of use. It can not only recover OST files from the local computer but even those stored on external media such as zip drives and CD-ROMs.
