Database Damaged: Old Items Can Not Be Deleted, Lock Up, Crash

[AlphaBovine]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel
Email Client: pop

My database is about 16GB+ and I handle a lot of emails containing photos and other large attachments. I know I need to have another method of transferring and storing these items so please no lectures on how dumb that is.

That being said, there are items in the Trash that simply can not be deleted. Upon attempting to delete the messages, Entourage locks up and a force quit is required. I am also getting damaged database notices every day now and I rebuild it every time and I still have the same problem about every 12 hours and things are pretty much at a stand still.

Any help or advice would be appreciated. I apologize in advance if this has already been answered in another thread.

- AB

 

[Diane Ross]

:

You need to rebuild your database. I'm going to caution you to follow these
directions carefully or you could loose all of your data.

1) The rebuild process makes a backup but if something goes wrong your
original database could be too corrupted to salvage. Make a backup in the
Finder. As long as you have an Identity that will open, you can salvage your
data. Working off a copy keeps the original safe from the rebuild process.
Because your database is so large, this increases your chances of problems.

2) You need to make sure you have enough hard disk space available for twice
the size of your database PLUS 10% free space. Even more might be required
to rebuild. I've seen databases that will only rebuild on a very large drive
(500GB with most of it free)

3) Be sure to quit Reminders aka Microsoft Database daemon before
rebuilding. Quit all running applications. This could take a very long time.

How to rebuild:

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/database/rebuild.html>

My recommendations:

1) Use a duplicate Identity as a clone to hold old messages. You can easily
switch back and forth to view older files. Not only will it make Entourage
more responsive, your data is less likely to be corrupted with daily use.

2) Take your second copy and delete all older messages. I suggest at least
60 days. See directions here: Archive Your Data
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/database/archive.html>

Since it's the end of a calendar year. I would start a new Identity for
2009. Leave the last 90 days of messages in the new Identity and let the
remainder be stored in your archive Identity.

This cloning method makes it pretty easy to accomplish. All your accounts
and folders are there. The only work is reducing the messages in your main
working Identity. Spotlight will even be able to find the old messages and
tell you to switch to that Identity to view.

Let me know how your rebuild goes.

 

[AlphaBovine]

Thanks Diane! I will give this a try and if all works well I will let you know.

- AB

 

[William Smith [MVP]]

That being said, there are items in the Trash that simply can not be
deleted. Upon attempting to delete the messages, Entourage locks up
and a force quit is required. I am also getting damaged database
notices every day now and I rebuild it every time and I still have
the same problem about every 12 hours and things are pretty much at a
stand still.

Some things that can't be done manually can often be done with an
AppleScript command.

Past the following one line into the Script Editor Applcation found in
/Applications/Script Editor:

tell application "Microsoft Entourage" to delete every message
in deleted items folder

Then click the Run button.

Hope this helps!

--

bill

Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
YouTalk <http://nine.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/youtalk>
Twitter: follow <http://twitter.com/meck>

 

[mickel]

Entourage 12.1.5 on intel running 10.5.6
I have exactly the problem headlined by the original poster.
Thank you William Smith for the script to delete every message from Entourage's deleted items folder. I ran it from script editor as advised. Unfortunately within a minute I got an Entourage timed-out message and then Entourage froze and I had to Force Quit it. When I reopened Entourage the twenty or so emails I'd wished to junk were still in the deleted items folder and I could not delete them from there, even gingerly one at a time.
I too had got the message that my database required repair. But the repair facility running overnight just stayed stuck at Step 5 (verifying).
Interestingly, when I took Diane Ross's advice and created a new Identity and copied over in small M-box files all emails in their folders from On My Computer of the damaged identity, taking care not to click Yes Delete when offered it on closing, because everything froze again, my complete new perfectly working identity weighed only about 50 MB whereas the old identity, which I could still not delete anything from without Entourage freezing, came in at a comparatively whopping 950 MB. It's as though all deletions of attachments and emails for the last eon had never in fact been deleted.
Is that possible? And if that is going to occur again with the new identity where would one find the old non-deleted but supposedly deleted stuff?

 

[Diane Ross]

my complete new perfectly working identity weighed only about 50 MB whereas
the old identity, which I could still not delete anything from without
Entourage freezing, came in at a comparatively whopping 950 MB. It's as though
all deletions of attachments and emails for the last eon had never in fact
been deleted.

The database will be left with 'wasted' space in it every time you delete
something. However, this is not all bad, since the wasted space is used up
with new data as it is added. This way, over a period of time (assuming that
you are deleting stuff as you go) the database will probably reach an
optimum size, after which the stuff you delete is roughly equal to the stuff
you add, and no further growth takes place.

Entourage archive (.rge) files are also very small because it's your actual
data only. Try exporting everything as a Entourage archive (.rge) file and
compare it's size to your database.

Is that possible? And if that is going to occur again with the new identity
where would one find the old non-deleted but supposedly deleted stuff?

Once a message is deleted, it's almost impossible to recover. Even outfits
like Drive Savers have difficulty in recovering deleted database items.