BA1776: The PST file has reached its 2 gig file size limit¶
End of life
Mailbox Protection reached end of life on 28 February 2017 and is not part of BackupAssist v10 and later. This article applies to BackupAssist v9 and earlier, which no longer receive technical support. See Software end of life.
| Error code | Product | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| BA1776 | BackupAssist | BackupAssist v4 to v9. |
Description¶
This error is thrown when a mailbox which you're backing up has reached the 2GB limit. The mailbox will be listed on the backup report with a note stating it's larger than 2GB.
Resolution¶
Once a PST file grows beyond 2GB in size, the file will become corrupt and unreadable by both Outlook and ExMerge.
Microsoft article Q288283 for errors that occur when PST files exceed 2GB.
Microsoft article Q830336 for more details about the 2GB PST limit
To overcome this ExMerge limitation, we recommend that you choose to group your mail data by month by selecting a grouping method in the Exchange tab of the software. This option will act to store mail data within separate folders for each month and overcomes the file size limit imposed on PST files (2GB) as each separate PST file will be much smaller as it only contains mail data for a specific month.
You can read more about grouping of mail in the BackupAssist Help File (Help > Help > Basics > Modifying jobs > Exchange Server > Mailbox directory options)
If your PST file does grow beyond 2GB unexpectedly, you are able to retrieve some of the data by using the Microsoft Inbox Repair Tool that is available for download. This utility allows you to create a truncated copy of your PST file. The resultant copy of the file, however, will not have all of the original data because the utility will shrink the file to a size that Outlook can read (ie. less than 2GB). Download the Microsoft Inbox Repair Utility
| Last updated | Created | Further assistance |
|---|---|---|
| 20th Mar 2017 | 16th Aug 2007 | BackupAssist Support page |