Questions[edb](server)

Technical Info: Exchange Server 2003 in a mixed AD 2003/2008 environment on a Windows Server 2003 Standard 32-bit computer.

Background: We recently changed backup solutions. Of course, just before we did someone deleted all of his sent items and didn't report it to us for a couple of weeks. Now, the best solution we have for recovering those emails is a backup of the priv1.edb and priv1.stm files created a while back during a defrag of the Exchange server database.

What I tried: I installed Exchange on a secondary server, hoping that I could pop in those files and Exmerge the relevant pst file out of there. However, I didn't want to risk any conflicts with the live Exchange server, so I disconnected it from the network. But then I discovered it won't let me go into ESM without being on the network, so this wouldn't work.

Questions:

• How does one export a mailbox out of the Exchange database (EDB) file, without attaching it to a server?
• Am I going to have to attach the database file to the live Exchange server during off-hours, exmerge the pst files, and then swap the live database back?
• Or, can I protect the live database by setting the main Information Store to offline while I work on the second instance of Exchange Server with the old database file?

Any advice is much appreciated!

Is there a way to restore the exchange 2007 storage group from an edb with no log files?

My exchange server crashed and all I have is the .EDB file.

Thanks

I have hit an issue on a MS SBS machine where every morning the datastore for the exchange mailboxes dismounts itself.

We believe the issue is that it has grown too large over time and needs cut down a bit.

As part of this we have removed (purged) some mail files that were no longer needed, which should have given us a saving of roughly 3GB (more than enough saving for what we need).

So I deleted the mailboxes, then purged them and noticed that the .edb file was still reporting the same size, I dismounted and remounted it to see if that would have any effect but it did not.

Am I missing a step? I have read online that you can run offline defrag on the file but that seems to only save you a small amount of whitespace.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I'm using EWS on an Exchange 2007 with basic authentication. I'm calling just the FindItems() method and the transaction log seem to grow alarmingly.

On my test server I ran an endless loop calling FindItems() and the logs grew with 1 MB per 5-6 minutes. In an production environment, calling this would cause a growth of 1 MB per 10-15 seconds!

Why does the transaction log grow when I only make read-only requests to the EWS?

Our Exchange 2003 SP2 got corrupted due to a RAID error, and unfortunately the back-ups are not up-to-date.

What is the best method of repairing the the Exchange .edb files with minimum possible data loss?