On 1/29/02 9:17 AM, "Greg Cook" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Paul,
> 
> He has done advanced rebuilds and it didn't help. Let me ask you a question.
> If and advanced rebuild will usually be required if something does go wrong,
> why have a typical rebuild at all? If there are some minor problems and they
> go unnoticed, I would think doing a routine typical rebuild could, in one
> form or another, be considered a preventative measure. Will doing a typical
> rebuild on a routine basis actually harm anything? Just curious.

I don't know everything there is to know about it. I know this much:

1) No preventative value

2) Typical rebuild compacts (i.e.  gets blocks on your hard disk which have
been "deleted". i.e. marked as "allowed to be overwritten by new data")
defined as outside of the database file instead of inside it, so that other
programs on your computer can use those blocks.

3) I _think_ that a typical rebuild moves data from one physical location to
another, rather like a defragmenter might. So it can fix minor problems to
do with fragmenting of files, like bad ordering of groups of messages in
folders. It must do a few other minor things too.

4) Constant rebuilding (like every few days) is not good for your disk, and
doesn't help anything if nothing's wrong.

5) The sort of problem requiring an Advanced Rebuild (screwed-up linking of
data within the database0 is not a result of not fixing things that can be
fixed by a Typical rebuild. It's a whole different order of problem, with a
multitude of different causes unrelated to block fragmentation for the most
part. (For all I know, there may be _some_ problems which are not that
dissimilar, but most are.)


So doing Typical Rebuilds which aren't necessary don't help, and in the long
run might even hurt. And they don't prevent problems which lead to needing
an Advanced Rebuild. If an MS person who actually works on databases is
prepared to give out more information (doubtful), you might find out more.
But this has been _their_ counsel all along, here, at MacTopia, and to beta
testers. I assume they know what they're talking about. I'm only repeating
what the developers have told us when I say the doing frequent unnecessary
rebuilds is not preventative and might do harm. If you think you know more
than the makers of Entourage, it's your risk. Sorry I don't have more hard
information.

-- 
Paul Berkowitz


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