Merging data from Orphaned Mailboxes 1

[mobyduck]

We recently had a hardware failure on our exchange 2000 box and had problems getting the old data from it as the network connectivity had gone completely, and most attempts to recover the data resulted in bluescreens.

To get my users working, I moved as many boxes as I could to our other server and then created new boxes for users whose data hadn't migrated. So far so good - at least the users could continue sending and receiving.

After a week or struggling, I've managed to recover all the old data to another server (with the same name and credentials as the failed box).

I'm trying to extract the old data with Exmerge, but of course there is no longer an associated user so the name doesn't appear in the list. The mailboxes are shown as orphaned and I can't seem to reconnect them as they still seem to have a container name attached.

Bear with me...The steps I think I need to take are as follows.

Exmerge out current data from the new box.
Recreate the user (without a mailbox)
Connect the recreated user to the old mailbox
Import the Exmerged PST file (with current data)

Will this work ?? Any guidance will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Davetoo]

If you exmerge the data from the dead box to a PST you could then just give each user their own PST file to merge back in to their new mailbox. How many users are we talking about here?

I'm Certifiable, not certified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.

 

[mobyduck]

Hi Lander215,

Sounds like a better idea than mine as we're only talking 40 users.

The problem is that when I run exmerge against the old mailstore, there aren't any users mailboxes listed to export - presumably because the users now are pointed to their new boxes, or am I missing something ?