{"id":4449,"date":"2019-10-10T12:49:06","date_gmt":"2019-10-10T12:49:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kerneldatarecovery.com\/blog\/?p=4449"},"modified":"2021-03-11T05:43:00","modified_gmt":"2021-03-11T05:43:00","slug":"fix-the-cannot-read-from-the-source-file-or-disk-error-in-outlook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kerneldatarecovery.com\/blog\/fix-the-cannot-read-from-the-source-file-or-disk-error-in-outlook\/","title":{"rendered":"Fix the \u2018Cannot Read from the Source File or Disk\u2019 Error in Outlook"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft Outlook, as we all know, provides more extensive features than most of the other email client applications available in the market. A wide range of users utilizes Outlook to share emails, calendars, and other significant mailbox data items among each other. If you are also using Outlook as the email client, you might need moving your PST files from one location to another. Moving PST from one location to another sometimes leads to unexpected errors like \u201cCannot read from the source file or disk\u201d<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

There might be different causes behind this error, but the most significant cause is the file system mismatch situation. A File System mismatch arises due to the difference in the file system type. Suppose you are using a Windows version 10 on your system, the chances are that your files system is NTFS<\/strong>. For older versions of Windows like 7 or 8, this can be NTFS<\/strong> and FAT32<\/strong>. Systems having FAT32<\/strong> as the file system, will not be able to handle large-sized files. The file size that a FAT32 <\/strong>system type can handle is limited to 4 Gigabytes. Files larger than the specified file size lead to errors like \u201cCannot copy or move Outlook .pst\u201d<\/strong> or in some cases, \u201cCannot read from the source file or disk.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Apart from this, there might be several other reasons that lead to such errors. We have listed some of the common reasons behind \u201cCannot read from the source file or disk\u201d error, and some quick troubleshooting techniques to fix this error.<\/p>\n

Reasons behind \u201cCannot read from the source file or disk\u201d<\/strong> error in Outlook<\/h4>\n

Some of the root causes include:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Outlook is running while copying the PST files<\/strong><\/li>\n

    Before moving PST files from internal storage to any external storage or moving them within the internal storage, make sure that you are not running Outlook in the background. Moving files while running Outlook in the background flash errors like \u201cCannot copy or move Outlook .pst<\/strong>\u201d or \u201cCannot read from the source file or disk<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

  2. Default settings of the Antivirus installed in your system<\/strong><\/li>\n

    Users often install antiviruses that prevent the transfer of files from external sources, causing error messages to flash on the screen. This becomes a pain in neck situation for users as they are most likely to be unaware that the antivirus is preventing the files from getting copied in some external locations. Therefore, if you have installed an antivirus on your system, check the settings and disable settings that cause this error.<\/p>\n

  3. Bad sectors on hard drives<\/strong><\/li>\n

    If the source disk drive is having damaged sectors, you are most likely to get error messages while copying the files. These damaged components may also lead to corruption of files affecting the total health of your PC. Therefore, you need to fix the issue before copying the files from the source drive to the destination drive.<\/p>\n

    Windows offer an inbuilt Scandisk<\/strong> utility to fix damages on internal as well as external disk drives. To run this feature on your Windows system, follow the steps given below:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Go to search and type Command prompt<\/strong>.<\/li>\n
    2. Right-click and select \u201cRun as Administrator<\/strong>.\u201d<\/li>\n

      \"Run<\/p>\n

    3. Type chkdsk D: \/f<\/strong> and hit the Enter<\/strong> button.<\/li>\n

      \"Run<\/p>\n

      Note:<\/strong> The syntax for using the Scan command is: chkdsk [Drive:] [parameters]<\/strong>, wherein the parameters include:<\/p>\n