Need guidance, experience or prayers...Exchange 2K Info Store

[antioed]

I have a DB with some serious problems, I can't free up space with ESEUTIL
/D...defrag function errors out. ESEUTIL /P freezes up @ 50% through the
"Repairing damaged tables" phase and never completes the repair. I don't
know when this corruption began and at this point I'm starting to think maybe
it would be best to start a new DB file but the /d /p switch combo to defrag
and write a new DB file also fails. My question is: Can I Exmerge-->export
all of the data that currently lives in this corrupted yet mountable DB and
then simply load up a new blank Store and Exmerge-->import the data into the
freshly created DB? The DB always seems to mount fine so I'm
thinking ExMerge will work but I'd like to make sure I'm not going to lose anything or screw up users's settings if possible. Is there a better method?

 

[nhidalgo]

Are you using standard or enterprise addition? If using enterprise you could create another information store(new db's) and then move the mailboxes, this would preserve all the users mail and settings, it would pretty much be invisible to the users except requiring outlook to be restarted after the users is moved. If using standard either use exmerge to export and then reimport to the new db. or run a full backup, mount a blank info store and then restor the backup. Your backups may not be completing if you have a db error though.

Nick


Nick

 

[chrisstyles]

`Hi,

We are just contemplating an upgrade this weekend to Ex2k3 and have an almost similar problem.

We decided to run a defrag on the stores to check they were ok and one wasn't. The defrag errored.

We took the view it was best to create a new store as we run enterprise version and move the mailboxes over. You can do this whilst the users are online, the only problem comes with multiple Global Catalogues and DC's due to replication time.

Max downtime is 20mins.

If you are using standard, the only way is as nhidalgo says and restore the brick level backup making sure it skips any corrupt items.



Chris Styles

NT4/2000 MCSE