Using Outlook archive.pst to recover emails?

[Guest burthardin]

My hard drive has failed. I use Norton 360 to backup my files every week. I have tried to recover the outlook.pst file, but for whatever reason, I can't (I will be checking in with Norton on this issue). It does appear that I was able to recover the archive.pst file. However, I am not able to view or otherwise access this file in Outlook. I have tried to Open>Outlook Data File and chose the archive.pst, but I get an error message that says: "The File... archive.pst is not a personal folders file." The outlook.pst file that I've been unable to recover from Norton appears to be about 4gb in size. The archive.pst files that I have recovered are much smaller, but I assume they are compressed and contain the data I am looking for. Would the archive file contain the data I want and if so, how can I access it?

Thanks