Weird. It's always been a PST file for me. Even with Outlook 2000.

The .ost file is an Offline folder store. The .pst file is a normal folder store. One is used when your primary storage is on an Exchange server. The other is used if you're using Outlook as a POP3 client.

If you use AutoArchive, you'll probably have both (outlook.ost and archive.pst).

At work (and at home) I always syncronize my email with an exchange server. The syncronization data is in an .ost file. One day the server went nuts, and I couldn't even use my sync data. I tried to open the .ost file as a .pst file, and it didn't work. I looked around and found a couple of programs that is supposed to convert between the two formats.

Ah okay. I don't have Exchange running so I just grab my email with POP3.

- Trevor

Glad it worked for you!

I feel vindicated now since I got a bunch of grief from this board for taking my HD apart in a prior thread . However I also got some great RMA help from this board that was really appreciated.

My hard drive actually had a head crash that kept the patters from moving. The heads were stuck to the platter hard! There was some disk damage so I returned the drive to IBM/Hitachi. I was very careful not to mess up the stickers. I just found out today that a replacement HD was shipped out. Apparently my sticker removal and reattachment was unnoticed.

I believe HD's have the mystic around them that they are unapproachable. Thus the $1200 they want to get one spinning. I imagine that cost may be justified if the HD was melted in a fire or something with only the platter surviving. But $1200 to get it to spin is ridicules.

Glad its going and if I were you I'd try to get an RMA and return it once the data is off.

The price reflects the cost of building and maintaining a clean room.

Rob

Granted clean rooms would cost but it seems to me that after 20 or 30 HD's to pay for the clean room $1200 to spin up a HD would be gravy.

I might look into this....

I have one tiny hole in my sticker where the 7th screw holds the case together. I'm not even going to both sending this thing in for warranty for that reason and one other reason: I am going to frame this hard drive and hang it on my wall to remind me to always backup my data!

Luckily, I have a 48GB IBM Travelstar that I just pulled from my empeg a few months ago - that's going into the notebook now.

Thank you everyone for your support. Reading your posts let me approach this in a "the worst hasn't happened... yet" attitude.