PST files are lousy when they get big.  If you have an Exchange server and are presumably backing that up, do you really need to have these big PST files too?

 This post is crossposted on  microsoft.public.outlook, microsoft.public.outlook.general

 Exchange 2003 server with Outlook 2003 clients. All SP up todate. No cache Exchange mode. Approx. 120 users. Mailboxes are limited to 250mb each for most users and sometimes more if necessary.
 We have as a company policy on each computer for backup: a PST file with two folders (MailIn and MailOut) that receives a copy of all incoming mail and all outgoing mail with a local rule.
 For this same reason we don't need Auto Archive: all messages are backed up in the PST file.
 The problem I am seeing lately is that any computer where the PST file is bigger than 700mb has a remarkable loss of performance: the computer is very very slow. As soon as I create a new PST file and close the old one performances are back to normal.

 1. Is there a way to avoid this undesired side effect? I was told Outlook 2003 has 32gb limit on the PST file size.
 2. Can anyone explain to me this unusual behavior.

 TIA

 Yaacov Klapisch
 IT Department
 RCS - Rampal Cellular Stockmarket
 yaacov@rampal.com    www.rampal.com

If your people tend to keep Outlook open when you copy these PSTs, don't
consider them backed up.  There's a significant chance that you could not
recover the data in a PST that gets backed up or otherwise copied while it's
known to a running Outlook.

This seems anomalous to me.  We have 100 MB limits on your mailboxes and so
we use a lot of PSTs as well.  There are some people whose PSTs exceed the
size you name and do not experience the performance degradation you
describe.

The default limit is 20 GB, but it can be increased to the TB range.

I can't.