Pstdelta

Pstdelta is used to generate binary differentials from .pst files

Download

The source: pstdelta-060315.tar.gz

The old source: pstdelta-060210.tar.gz

Update - 060315

I have fixed a bug that caused an empty block to be appended to the delta file before the crc data. This caused verify to fail but didn't result in any corruption of legitimate data.

I have also added a perl script (run_pstdelta.pl) to facilitate the use of pstdelta. When run on the first day of the week it will dump your pst files somewhere. When run on other days it will generate delta files. See the contents of the file for more information.

Introduction to Pstdelta

Pstdelta was created in order to vastly reduce the size of differential backups of Outlook Personal Folders (.PST) files.

Administrators of Windows networks running Outlook will often find their fileservers clogged with Outlook pst files. These files are often around 1GB in size. Since these files change every day the nightly backup will have to save them every day. This could mean that space has to be made for 1GB per user per day.

PST files are often just too big. For networks with even a moderate number of users .pst files can take up too much space on backup media. Reducing disk utilization while maintaining a functional backup can be difficult.

Pstdelta can be used to store the differences between an old and new version of a pst file. It can then generate the new file using just the old file and the output generated by pstdelta.

NOTE: this program has been stable for me for a while. However, running verify after making a delta file is probably a good idea.