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Imagine if you kept every piece of paperwork for your business in your in-tray. It would reduce your productivity and you would run the risk of losing items. The same analogy holds true for Microsoft Outlook.

Microsoft Outlook was designed as a highly functional inbox for communications and appointments. Because it so handy though, many of us have started using it as our main data repository for all of our correspondance. If we treated Outlook like a proper inbox and calendar device and dealt with all of the items as they arrived, your outlook.pst file wouldn't need to be more than about 20Mb. 

Because it is so easy to create folders and file emails away, many of us end up with outlook.pst files that are massive - well over 1GB! Some people don't even move things from their inbox at all and have thousands of emails in there. Having so much data in one file and in a file that is known to have problems maintaining massive amounts of data is a bad idea. If a single corruption hits your outlook.pst file, you could lose the lot. 

To help maintain Outlook in working order make sure that you don't sidable the auto-archiving feature. This compresses and stores old emails and items into a separate archive file in case you need them later. you can also create multiple .pst files to store data in, maybe in separate files for business and personal. Don't forget to add these archive and multiple .pst files to your backup though.

Here is an article on how to create and maintain multiple .pst files and the advantages that this brings.