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#194484 - 2009-06-27 03:08 AM Re: Searching PSTs on PC's [Re: NTDOC]
Glenn Barnas Administrator Offline
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We closed Outlook because we were making the PST disappear from the user. As the header says - after closing Outlook, we disassociate the PST from Outlook, rename it, and record the location so we can mess with it later (import it into the archive system) without the user being able to manipulate it.

If we weren't taking the PST away from the user, then your idea (and not closing Outlook) would make sense.. \:\)

Glenn
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#194494 - 2009-06-29 08:34 PM Re: Searching PSTs on PC's [Re: Glenn Barnas]
NTDOC Administrator Offline
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Thanks for the input Glenn. Guess I missed that part, thought you were just backing up. As usual, some great code. Now I just need to go through it and trim it down a bit to use for an automated backup to external USB drives each day using NTBACKUP. We have half a dozen users with multiple GB PST files that are local, but still need to be backed up so I don't catch grief for it later on for not doing it. I could manually create the folders and find the PST files, but doing it in an automated fashion seem fun.





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#194744 - 2009-07-14 03:07 AM Re: Searching PSTs on PC's [Re: NTDOC]
NTDOC Administrator Offline
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Well I was modifying Glenn's code to hook into a semi-automated PST backup to external USB drive and found that you can't backup a single file via the command line. You have to use a file that ntbackup reads. It is a .BKS file and you call it with an @filepath+filename.bks

So now I have to add a bit more code to actually write the file first and then call it. You can do folder backups with all command line or systemstate but not single files.

But, thanks for putting your code together so I could rip it apart for my own use Glenn.

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#194748 - 2009-07-14 05:07 AM Re: Searching PSTs on PC's [Re: NTDOC]
Radimus Moderator Offline
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PSTs are BBBBAAAADDDDDD.

We (my company) has spent the bulk of the last year disabling PST and importing PSTs into a server based archive (Symantec Enterprise Vault) after having to search out and preserve PSTs and search them for legal discovery.

I should have some code that reads the user's messaging profile for PSTs and then robocopies them to a central store, but certainly nothing as sophisticated as Glenn's code.
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#194755 - 2009-07-14 01:32 PM Re: Searching PSTs on PC's [Re: Radimus]
NTDOC Administrator Offline
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I don't like them either, but I don't own or run the Company. The solution you speak of cost thousands of dollars and that just isn't happening.

I'm having a hard time trying to get them to reduce their mailboxes. They will not allow me to put a limit policy in place and currently I have some users with about 15GB in their InBox - I have to do something or their going to run the Mail Server out of space in the next few months. Though maybe I should let them and tell them "I told you so".

I've got the code just about done to do automated backups. Should hopefully have it done either tomorrow or the next day. I must be missing something as you're now the second person to suggest RoboCopy and I'm a big fan of RoboCopy but a PST file should be locked for write and not copyable by RoboCopy. Let alone you'd still need to either manually find and set or automated find and set the path and files.


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#194757 - 2009-07-14 02:30 PM Re: Searching PSTs on PC's [Re: NTDOC]
Allen Administrator Online   shocked
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I'd be interested too about copying / backing up an open pst. One of my customers has tons of those things. Backup Exec sees them as corrupted files.

At one point, I was going down the road of trying to determine if any pst files were open, and to either close the app or disconnect the shared directory. Now what did I do with that code?... and what was the result? (Don't mind me, just having one of my many senior moments. )

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#194765 - 2009-07-14 08:25 PM Re: Searching PSTs on PC's [Re: Allen]
Radimus Moderator Offline
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I understand about the cost and it isn't for everyone, but we had 2 lawsuits that required us to produce every email from every manager and 3 departments (about 150 - 200 staff in 13 remote sites) containing X search strings.

We also have to preserve their PSTs in their original form at that time (create disk images if on local drives)

a HUGE PITA taking up the time of a dozen IT staff...

It wasn't long until the decision was made to go with centralized storage... there is always another lawsuit and discovery process.
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#194820 - 2009-07-16 03:42 AM Re: Searching PSTs on PC's [Re: Radimus]
NTDOC Administrator Offline
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What a pain. So it turns out that Microsoft NTBACKUP uses Unicode UTF-16LE NO BOM for creating and reading a .BKS file.

So far I've not been able to get VBScript with FSO to create one. If anyone else has had any luck with this please let me know and share the code.

I can use UltraEdit to save the file as Unicode UTF-16LE NO BOM and NTBACKUP will use it, but I'd really like to finish this off with an automated script if possible. Otherwise I'll have to build the BKS file manually for everyone that I want to set this backup for.

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#194822 - 2009-07-16 05:50 AM Re: Searching PSTs on PC's [Re: NTDOC]
Allen Administrator Online   shocked
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Do you know about this: CreateBKS() - http://www.kixtart.org/forums/ubbthreads...true#Post120687
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#194849 - 2009-07-16 07:05 PM Re: Searching PSTs on PC's [Re: Allen]
NTDOC Administrator Offline
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Dependencies: KiXforms .net

Don't want it to depend on installing KiXforms. Pretty much would need to be either KiX or VBScript since KiX is in Netlogon and WSH is native

Thanks for sharing the idea though Allen.



Byte-order mark
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte-order_mark

UTF-8
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8


UTF-16/UCS-2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-16/UCS-2
 Quote:
UTF-16 is the native internal representation of text in the Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/CE; Qualcomm BREW operating systems; the Java and .NET bytecode environments; Mac OS X's Cocoa and Core Foundation frameworks; and the Qt cross-platform graphical widget toolkit

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#194851 - 2009-07-16 07:12 PM Re: Searching PSTs on PC's [Re: NTDOC]
NTDOC Administrator Offline
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Loc: CA
Just out of curiosity I'll try and use KiXforms there to create the file but my guess is it can not build it correctly either. Back when that was written I think NTBACKUP could use the normal notepad UNICODE file, but along the way Microsoft changed it.
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