This article explains what the message “Not enough free disk space available,” which appears sometimes in the course of using Recovery Wizard, means and what to do about it. The article also describes how this message affects attempts to fix PST file damage and what actions must be taken to successfully repair PST files.
Before recovering a PST file, Outlook Recovery Wizard verifies that there is sufficient free disk space on the user-specified disk to save the result – a recovered PST file. The PST size is calculated beforehand in order to make sure that the recovery process is not interrupted, and so that the recovered PST file is sure to fit on the disk. This also owes to the fact that the PST size after recovery often proves to be larger than the size of the original corrupted PST file (the discrepancy depends on the degree of damage).
If when using Outlook Recovery Wizard you see the message “Not enough free disk space available” (on the first page of the wizard after specifying the place to save the recovered PST file), there is no reason to give up your efforts to fix PST file damage. All that this message means is that the PST file which you are planning to recover is larger than the amount of space available on the chosen disk or the selected location can not be used to write repaired PST file. In order to get around this and successfully repair PST damage, you simply need to select another location which is write enabled or make more free disk space available:
- Try to free disk space by deleting unnecessary files.
- Delete temporary files by using the Disk Cleanup utility included with Windows.
- Write a backup copy of the .pst to a removable disk (preferably a flash drive), delete the corrupted PST file from your hard drive, and then try to recover your Personal Folders file by selecting the copy on the external drive as the source. You can save the recovered PST file to any folder on your hard drive or directly to the default PST folder.
Important! No matter what, we urge all users to make backups of corrupted PST files before beginning the recovery process.
If there is sufficient disk space for the recovered PST file, the process to fix PST file damage should go off without a hitch.