MailStore Data integrity fails with "Message #xxxxx: Header for mime entity #xxxx is not available..."

MailStore Data integrity fails with "Message #xxxxx: Header for mime entity #xxxx is not available..."

After running a MailStore data Integrity check ( Or verify Store command) If you then see errors that look like:

Message #148472: Header for mime entity #840552 is not available. Container: 3909.dat, Entry #29 

This is explaining  that the message with id  #148472 has no message header data within the archive store file 3909.dat  which usually indicates that file is either missing or damaged and it cannot be accessed. As a result that message will not be readable within the archive

Common reasons for seeing this include:

  1. An underlying disk level problem
  2. An unexpected machine reboot (ie. due to power loss)
  3. The action of a third party anti virus application
  4. If the archive stores are on a network share, an issue with access to it or with the network location itself. 

However the most common issue is usually Anti virus so the recommendations is to add suitable exclusions in your anti virus software to help prevent any further problems in the future. 


this is covered in the following MailStore help Guide:

https://help.mailstore.com/en/server/Notes_on_Antivirus_Software  

If the error is for the current archive store that new email is currently being archived into, before acting on the problematic store you should use 'Create' under Administrative Tools -> Storage -> Storage Locations to create a new archive store  name accordingly and set its status to 'Archive here'

This way any new email that’s archived is not being written to the damaged archive store you need to work on. 

If there are only a few effected .dat files and the issue is recent damage then you you can attempt to restore the damaged 'dat' files from a  previous backup if you have one Then run a verification against the store again too see if that is indeed damaged or not. 

If you don’t have a good backup you can revert those files back to the only way forward to resolve the damage and errors is to create a new fresh archive store and merge the good data from the damaged store into this new store (Please note this is a lossless method and any currently damaged message data will be lost but the result is a new working archive store that is clean and would pass a verification. 

To merge a store into a new one please see this guide 

As this may take some time we would recommend you schedule this overnight with all other MailStore jobs suspended. The easiest way to do this is to run MailStore in safe mode, this will give MailStore the maximum resources to perform the merge.


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