FAQ and Knowledge Base

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 doesn’t 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 file could still cause problems. For these reasons, and the fact that .ost files can be regenerated, we chose to delete .ost files from the shadow copy before the image is created.

Even if the performance issues didn’t exist, there are situations where Exchange will, after an .ost is restored, detect a “future” version of the .ost file and force you to delete and then regenerate the local .ost file. Therefore, it’s still preferable to regenerate an .ost file instead of restoring it. >>

Hence, OST files cannot be copied with ViceVersa PRO using VSS Volume Shadow Copies, on Windows Vista.

To prevent ViceVersa PRO from reporting this error with OST files and VSS, exclude the OST file from the profile. Add an exclude file filter to exclude the file "outlook.ost", under profile settings -> file filters.