Recover transaction logs

[lwolfson]

Had a rough day yesterday as 2 tranaction logs files were corrupted and though I was able to recover from full backup and diff, I still have 14 hours of tlogs to add. I was able to restich in 12 hours of them, but now have 20 5 megs logs that didn't go in. MS Support said no way to fix due to datestamps and stuff.

Question: anyone know how to open these logs to save the emails or is there any third party utility that can do it?

I would love to have 100% recovery as users don't feel 99.995% is enough!

Exch 5.5 SP4 on W2K SP4 no special hotfixes. SIngle site/server.

 

[zbnet]

Transaction logs are sequentially numbered (in hex), and Exchange doesn't like gaps in the sequence. Are you saying you have a bad set of logs that are stopping later (good) ones being read by the store? Or are your latest logs corrupt? Are you sure the inform,ation in the logs hasn't been committed to the database? If it has been committed, you don't really need the logs unless you want to roll back to a previous backup of the database.

 

[lwolfson]

I worked with MS on this for 5 hours and they said cant be fixed. I am looking for a third party tool to open the logs and try and stitch back the emails. I lost one of the logs that was not yet committed so others after it wouldn't go into store. Now I have 20 logs with no way to put them in.

 

[zbnet]

Then you have nothing to lose by trying this:

Move the logs after the missing one to another directory, then shut down the IS service - this commits all remaining logs. Backup the store (either offline, or restart to do an online, then shut down again) - if all goes badly wrong, then at least you have an uptodate backup of your store! Then remove all existing logs (if you did an online backup these will be gone anyway), delete the checkpoint file, and replace the logs with your most recent, uncommitted logs that you moved to an alternate directory earlier. Use ESEUTIL /R /IS (this is the non-damaging recovery mode, not the data-purging repair mode) to attempt to make your database consistant with the logs that it finds.