Having installed MS Outlook on my 2007 on my Windows XP based computer, I felt I had securely upgraded my system to a stable, economical and decently upgraded combination. To complete the picture, I had installed Symantec Norton Antivirus to protect my system from virus threat and malware attack. With this combination working for a good 2 months, one fine day, I decided to clean my system of unuseable files, and useless folders. Having worked strenuously for good four hours, I was quite satisfied with my work, and decided to complete the task after a few days again. Little did I realize then that I, in my endeavor to improve performance of my system, have sabotaged it myself. Had I known it, I would have taken a backup to ensure efficient file recovery.

But tragedies happen when you least expect them , and when you feel you have done something that deserved accolades. Next day, when I tried to access my mail account through Office Outlook, to access some important emails, I found the following message staring at me:

The file drive:\path\file name.pst could not be found.

where, drive:\path\file name.pst is the PST file storage location. I had no option but to click 'OK'. Then it showed me 'Create/Open Personal Folders File' dialog box. Undeterred by this message, I ventured on my tryst for a pst file recovery method.

With no backup available, I knew recovery was not an easy task to accomplish. But then, it wasn't tough either, as I immediately understood that due to the deletion that I had carried out the previous day, the pst file had been deleted too. And since the Recycle Bin had been overloaded, the file had bypassed the same. But, I searched the internet, and read relevant posts avidly to find out the best possible solution to my problem. As I had presumed, file recovery software were available in the market to recover any kind of deleted file, irrespective of its file format, doc, zip, xls, or any other.

A reliable user-friendly software that supports recovery of pst file format, besides other formats is Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery. With support for more than 185 different file formats, and ability recover data from NTFS, FAT and exFAT file systems, the tool can also be used to clone or image a hard drive. This file recovery software is compatible with Windows 7, Vista, 2003, XP and 2000.