Outlook 2003 Personal Folders: Does encryption slow access to mail?

[wrreisen2]

Hi,

I have a 2Gb .pst file that I have built up over several years. (Never
have deleted good mail or autoarchived anything). This .pst file is of
course a 97-2002 version .pst file. I have reached the file size limit
for this. I an error message coming up that I need to switch to the new
kind of .pst file. When creating a new file there is the option for
"compressible encryption" or "high encryption". With a large mail box
(2Gb) would using either encryption method this significantly slow down
Outlook functions such as searches through contacts and mail folders.
Would one encryption method be quicker than the other? (It is running
on 3Ghz Xeon). Most of the mail is just messages but afew have some
fairly large multimedia attachments. Thanks.

 

[DL]

You might want to do something about this file ASAP as problems can occur
when larger than 1.6gb and the whole file may become inaccessible at 2gb
If it becomes corrupt your only option would be to strip data from the file
with the MS tool, until it becomes accessible, assuming it could be repaired
At the very least split it in two ie create a new pst and copy data across.
Or of course upgrade to OL2003 to make use of the unicode format pst, which
doesnt have the same size limitation.
You could also take the attachments out to store elsewhere

 

[Brian Tillman]

I have a 2Gb .pst file that I have built up over several years. (Never
have deleted good mail or autoarchived anything). This .pst file is of
course a 97-2002 version .pst file. I have reached the file size limit
for this. I an error message coming up that I need to switch to the
new kind of .pst file. When creating a new file there is the option
for "compressible encryption" or "high encryption". With a large mail
box (2Gb) would using either encryption method this significantly
slow down Outlook functions such as searches through contacts and
mail folders. Would one encryption method be quicker than the other?
(It is running on 3Ghz Xeon). Most of the mail is just messages but
afew have some fairly large multimedia attachments. Thanks.

If you're close to the maximum size, you should probably avoid encryption of
the PST.