🚀 go-pugleaf

I know I should keep more free space on drive C for my swap file but...

Running DOS PCElm v1.11 under OS/2 v2.11 with various other 
OS/2 programs running in the background my swap file filled
the harddisk up completely while I was reading new mail.
There were no errors downloading or unbatching news.

I had just downloaded news and mail and went to look at the
new mail in PCElm - it was immediately obvious all was not well.
The maillist looked OK, but the new messages seemed to be empty
although their titles were OK and the last message entry claimed 
to be -1234556 bytes long but showed correct (latest) time.

At this point OS/2 interrupted to grumble about the swap file,
and after making some free space I tried to continue with PCElm.
Unfortunately, it lockedup & the message base had dissappeared :(

I have recovered most of the mail upto the previous logon, by
careful use of Norton utilities, but I can find no trace of the
messages which were downloaded in the final ill fated session.

Can anyone tell me what hidden file the most recent mail download
might be found in and whether there is any chance of rescuing it.
And also why PCElm truncates the mail file to 0 bytes length if 
it runs out of disk space (this destroys all existing mail).

It is possible that this mode of failure only exists in OS/2 
where the amount of free space available can change dynamically
while the DOS program is running, but perhaps it can fail in DOS too.

I am fairly resigned to having lost any incoming mail this time,
but it would be nice to know in the future if some other course
of action would have had a better outcome.

For example if I had killed PCElm from OS/2's task manager when it 
was displaying the list of available messages would I have been able
to quit more gracefully and perhaps preserve the mail base?

Thanks for any advice either for rescuing the missing msgs 
or avoiding further nasty problems with disk full errors.
I have freed some more disk space for a safety margin.

Best regards,
-- 
Martin Brown  <martin@nezumi.demon.co.uk>     __                CIS: 71651,470
Scientific Software Consultancy             /^,,)__/