ANN: Compact utility for deleting duplicate emails ;-)

[Boguslaw]

PostPosted: Sep Thu 2nd 2004 12:16pm ANN: Compact utility for deleting duplicate emails

I You have problems with duplicate emails after for example importing from Opera then please look into Thunderbird Features forum for more infor about compact utility.

Or download it right now from : htttp:\\www.bransoft.com\data\compact.zip

GPL license Wink


Best Regards
Boguslaw Brandys

[larkas]

The URL should be:

http://www.bransoft.com/data/compact.zip

[thundernetbr]

I used this program with the "compact.exe /D /F Inbox" syntax, believing it would delete *only* the duplicate messages. Instead of this, I lost my *entire* Inbox (not Inbox.msf) weighting 1 GB and about 5000 e-mail messages...

After the disaster was made, immediately I powered off my computer, took another HD as master and tried to get it back using three different recovery software, including EasyRecovery 6.04 (with advanced features and the most deep search of all). No luck. The Inbox is gone forever.

So I don't recommend to use this little software, at least not if you don't use the /B switch and make, also, a copy by yourself.

Best regards,

--ThundernetBR

[Boguslaw]

First truly sorry
I suppose You used compact version 2.0 ?
I checked (twice) source code and there is rather impossible for compact utility to delete MBOX file becouse this version first make backup copy, then read line per line from this backup while creating compacted mbox file to ANOTHER file. This way even if application fail You have inbox.bak file which is exactly a copy of original before comapcting !
But ,anyway You are right. !!!!!
I tested it with Thunderbird with the same options and after compacting and run Thunderbird my inbox was empty !
However I keep on going to research what is caused this bug I realized that in Thunderbird 0.9 something strange happen when You delete *.msf files ! They are recreated but also mbox file is emptied !!!!!
Seems that is a bug in Thunderbird !
I can reproduce this by deleting msf file (when thunderbird is closed) and start thunderbird.After a while when thunderbird is getting emails and should compacting folders - my inbox is empty !

Once again - truly sorry.

Boguslaw Brandys

[Boguslaw]

Anyway using /B option in compact.exe is a good choice.
i found also that this little utility can sometimes delete the last email in mbox file, this is a bug , but currently I can't fix this , sorry

[thundernetbr]

Thanks for your reply. Any chance to recover the Inbox file ? I can't believe that even strong recovery tools (like the ones I used to make the try) couldn't be able to retrieve the file ! This is the most weird of all, since I always was able to recover lost files, but couldn't handle this one, even it being soooo huge (1 GB in size)...

--ThundernetBR

[Boguslaw]

I doubt. If I'm right Thunderbird just overwritten Your mbox file not deleted it !
But this could be also becouse after compacting by compact utility Thunderbird 0.9 does not recognize this file. I can only assure You that this utility works good with 0.7.3 and 0.8 versions of Thunderbird. (as was mentioned in program itself)
I will try to check against 0.9 but probably something changed in support of MBOX and MSF files in this version.


Best Regards
Boguslaw Brandys

[Boguslaw]

OK. Found the problem. My utility didn't wrote last email into compacted MBOX file, which is bad, but worse is that now Thunderbird (version 0.9) checked some value (probably MBOX file size) located at the end of each MBOX file . Becouse this part was deleted Thunderbird probably assumes that MBOX file is empty.

Here is fixed version of my utility :
http://www.bransoft.com/data/compact21.zip

Now, by default program creates backup files - this should prevent other problems in future.

Sorry if this bug caused disasters.

Boguslaw Brandys

[thundernetbr]

Well, now it's too late. Just tried again EasyRecovery, and I'm still amazed that absolutely *no track* of the file was found... pretty weird if we keep in mind the size of the Inbox original file (about 1 GB).

There's absolutely no clue whatsoever the file "went". Oh, yes, this brings us a lesson, but too costly for me... The next time, I'll first change the size of the Trash (it was set under 500 MB...), then make a backup and only then, run (any) program.

You can announce the previous version as a good (excellent !) track-eraser, don't you think ?

[Boguslaw]

This file was overwrited, but try to delete current inbox (or move to another directory) and use some tool to recover phisical records belongging to original inbox file (becouse it was huge some phisical sectors could be not filled again)

You mention EasyRecovery . Is it a File Recovery tool? If not maybe this helps:

http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm

Regards
Boguslaw Brandys

[Boguslaw]

Or

http://www.runtime.org/

[thundernetbr]

You mention EasyRecovery . Is it a File Recovery tool?

Yes, it is. It's made by Ontrack. I have a close friend which bought it for professional recovering after a big crash some month ago in his business (ISP provider).

I'll try GetDataBack, because PC Inspector doesn't works with NTFS (I am using XP Professional). Thank you for the link !

Later I'll post if I succeeded changing folders and so on to try recovering Inbox.
Oh, maybe I did'n mentioned it yet. Compact.exe erased Inbox *only*, not Inbox.msf nor Inbox.sbd.

Thanks again,

--ThundernetBR

[thundernetbr]

Oh, my. No luck at all. How can a little software make such a huge damage and so many recovering tools not be able to keep track of it ?

[Boguslaw]

Sorry, As I said this is not becouse compact.exe deleted Your inbox , but becouse relatively small bug ( deleting last email in compacted MBOX file) which was not critical in previous versions of Thunderbird, now acts like email killer in 0.9 , becouse Thunderbird thinks that this inbox is empty and mess with it shrinking to zero.

[SuperMac]

Hey sorry for being stupid but how do you use this program? is it installed as an extention? is there an how to?