reclaim storage/hard drive space HOW?

[bchizary]

Hi, we are running ex 5.5 on nt 4.0 all the sp's etc are up to date. Since introduction of exchange the size of the database has got bigger and bigger, im starting to try and clean it up a bit, get rid of old emails and junk etc. if a user deletes emails and junk from their inbox their mailbox size in exchange administrator gets smaller but the size of the database on the hard drive is still massive. Is it possible to do a resort or reclaim space or something on the drive to get the space back on the hard drive?

cheers
BenC

 

[johncan20]

you need to do an offline defrag on the exchange database since it doesnt actually get any smaller when you delete mail.this article will tell you how to do it

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;192185

 

[fuego007]

Don't worry about it! When you delete messages, the database size doesn't change, but Exchange will use the freed up space before using more space on the drive. In order to perform an offline defrag, you must have free space equal to 110% of the database size (i.e. a 10 GB prive would need 11 GB of free disk space.

Bob

 

[SimonDavis]

It still amazes me that Exchange is limited to these massive files.

If it has been running or a while, a defrag might well be worthwhile, but as already said, your disk has to have plenty of free space.

I quite often move old messages out of the DB to offline storage, and afterwards a defrage can cut the db size in half.

 

[bchizary]

the data is about 17gb, and its on a 18gb drive- can i run defrag if there is 110% space on another hard drive in the machine or does the spare space have to be on the same drive?

 

[zbnet]

You have a /T switch on ESEUTIL that allows you to specify a location for the temporary file created by the defrag process - this can be a networked drive, although this will slow the whole process down. Better if you can to temporarily add extra local disks to use for the defrag.

Before you begin, check your event log for 1221 events, these will tell you (one for each database) how much white space you have - this is what you will get back when you do an offline defrag. I'd personally not bother with the offline defrag if you have less than 20% white space.

 

[Zelandakh]

zb - you surely mean MORE than 20% white space?

<signature sold. new owner moving in shortly>

 

[zbnet]

No, I mean less. To put it another way, why bother running the offline defrag only to discover that the new database is between 80 and 99% the size of the original? That's a lot of downtime and out-of-hours hassle for me, for not much gain. It really only makes sense when the new database is going to be much smaller after the defrag. The point of viability is always going to be a personal judgement, though.