IT'S FASTER
My Outlook has become painfully slow and My machine has a core duo and 4 gigs of ram.
That's because I have 2500 letters in my mail folders.
At some point, the size of my .ost file exceeded 1.5 gigs. This file that keeps your e-mails on a local drive. When you open your Outlook, it opens the file. Day by day, this file grows.
A file is written to a hard disk, that resembles a vinyl disk in the way it stores information. So, the portions of your Outlook files are scattered around the disc. It all starts smoothly and on a new disc you write to the center of the disk - the fastest place for a file. The disc has an area with the names of the files and the "track" they are written in. So when you save a picture, it writes to track 7, for example. When you receive a new letter, it writes to track 8. When you open a web-page, the information is written to track 9. A new e-mail - track 10. It gets chaotic.
As in a gramophone, it takes time to skip to the next track. When you sort your e-mails by recepient, the software reads the tracks of in a chaotic manner: track 4, track 9, track 1. It is a slow process. In my case the Outlook filehad 35 230 fragments ("tracks"). Navigating such file was a nightmare for the hard drive.
The flash drive is more suited to chaotic file growth and random access, that is how Outlook functions when you sort by different criterias. Since an electronic disc or usb stick has no moving parts it doesn't have to move the needle. The access to parts of the file is incredibly fast. Especially when you have your outlook open all day and do something else, besides checking e-mails.
It is faster because the data file for outlook is on separate drive, the reads of the files are random, thus more suited for the non-volatile memory.
I have a built-in card reader and the memory stick is constantly sticking in it. The system is performing so much better and not interrupted by Outlook, trying to navigate in thousands of pieces of its file.
So, if you want to move your ost file to a flash card or usb drive, follow these steps that worked for my outlook 2007.
1. Outlook > Tools > Account Settings >
2. Select the Exchange account > Click Change >
3. click More Settings... > click tab "Advanced" > Click button Offline Folder File Settings... >
4. Clear Use Cashed Exchange Mode > Click Apply >
5. Click Offline Folder File Settings > Click Disable Offline Use > Click Yes >
6. Copy your old ost file to a new location > Select the Use Cashed Exchange Mode back
7. > Click Offline Folder File Settings...> Browse to the file on your removable drive
8. > Click OK > Apply > Ok > OK. Restart Outlook.
Now you have your Outlook data file on a much better drive for the job.
If your usb flash drive or card are slow, buy a new one, they are cheap nowadays. SDs like the following are particularly recommended, since they are fast and large, and has a speed, much better than an HDD. Sandisk 4GB EXTREME III SDHC SD Card (SDSDX3-4096, Static Pack)
