How Microsoft Outlook PST Files Get Corrupted?

PST files are the Personal Storage Folders that are used for storing users’ Outlook data. PST is an acronym for Personal Storage Table. PST stores data for POP3, IMAP and web – based email accounts.
PST Files store user’s email messages, attachments, contacts, calendar items, tasks, notes, journals and much more data. PST files are also known as Personal Address Book (.pab). 



PST files are of two types – ANSI and Unicode. ANSI files have maximum size of 2 GB where as Unicode files have either 20 GB or 50 GB space.

These Outlook personal storage PST files are very much prone to corruption and easily get damaged. PST files may get corrupted due to the malfunctioning of both software and hardware.

Reasons for PST file getting corrupted or damaged: -

As already mentioned that PST files may get corrupted either due to hardware issue or software issue, let’s see what these issues are.

Hardware Reasons: -

Occasional failure of hardware while storing or retrieving data from PST files damages or corrupts the PST file. This damage results in absurd behavior of PST files. Some of such hardware reasons are: -

• Power Failure:

If a user is accessing his PST file and meanwhile, power failure occurs, then this leaves the PST file damaged. This issue is very common and generally occurs where user may feel helpless. During this situation, the PST file gets damaged because the power failure acts as hindrance between the linking of all the strands that constituted the PST files. 

However, this this issue has now been solved up to very much extent as all the IT offices are generally backed up by the generators.

• Data Storage Device Failure:

Hard disks are very much prone to failures. Whatever brand and quality hard disk you take, it will surely fail some day. There are some bad sectors in the hard disks where the PST files get stored. These bad sectors create hindrance in opening and reading of PST files.

Failure of storage devices of corrupt the PST files to very extreme level. This damage is so severe that even Outlook faces issues in reading these corrupted PST files.

• Faulty Networking Device:

Let us consider a case. The PST file is residing on the server and you try to access it. In that case, the hardware devices that play a major role in connecting to the server are not functioning properly, then this too may damage the PST file. 

Networking devices such as routers, cables etc. must function properly if user wants to save himself from facing this issue.

Software Reasons: -

Corruption of PST files occurs mainly due to the software issues. Some of such issues are mentioned below.

• Virus:

Viruses are malicious computer programs that create issue in the normal functioning of the computer systems. These viruses affect the users system in various manners such as abruptly restarting user’s system, multiplication of the stored files, creating hassle in reading of any file, etc. Since PST is also a simple file format, these viruses can very easily damage it. 

Therefore, experts always suggest the users to equip their systems with the antivirus programs.

• Abnormal shut down of Outlook: -

Since Outlook is also just an application; it is also prone to corruption and damage. As a result of such damage, Outlook may behave in an irregular manner. If a user is accessing his PST file with the help of Outlook and suddenly it gets corrupted then there is 100% possibility for the PST file to get corrupted.

• Issues in behavior of PST files: - 

PST files are of two types – ANSI and Unicode. ANSI PST files have the capacity of 2 GB where as the Unicode files can store data up to 20 GB or 50 GB. If user is using ANSI PST file and the data exceeds the limit of 2 GB, then this situation can also damage the PST file as PST file was not configured to handle such situations.

How To View Corrupted PST Files! 

When PST files get corrupted, it becomes difficult even for the Microsoft Outlook email client application to open these PST files. There may be other situations too in which user might not be having Microsoft Outlook installed and he may be in the need to view PST files. In all these situations, a free Windows utility tool Outlook PST Mail Reader can be used. This software is completely free and fetches the data from corrupted as well as password protected PST files without taking any kind of help from Outlook.