Why Outlook OST files do not copy on Windows Vista, when using VSS Volume Shadow Copies?
When using VSS Volume Shadow Copies in Vista, ViceVersa PRO gives this error message if you try to copy an Outlook OST file: “Can not open outlook.ost. The file could not be located.” This is by design in Windows Vista. Windows Vista Volume Shadow Copies do not include Outlook OST files. The following is Microsoft explanation of this design decision: << Maintaining changes to .ost files within shadow copies is expensive in terms of space and I/O activity. The performance impact doesnt occur during the image backup itself--the only extra work at backup time is backing up the .ost file as part of the image. Instead, the performance impact occurs during the ongoing, everyday I/O to the .ost file when Outlook is running. If the .ost changes were kept in shadow copies, then every time Outlook writes to the .ost file, the result is a copy-on-write I/O hit (2 writes, 1 read). Although we have worked to reduce the impact of copy-on-writes on shadow copies, a heavily churned file like an .ost f
