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We have a power user that we suspect has a corrupted MB (missing emails, etc.). To troubleshoot the issue further, we want to delete this user's Exchange MB, create a new one, associate it with his AD account, then restore the mail from Backup Excec (we have the exchange component).

Questions:

  1. Is there a standard way to do this (in terms of MS Exchange)?
  2. Any "gotchas" we should be aware of?

Thanks

Holocryptic
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I.T. Support
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  • How many missing emails are we talking? Someone comes to me almost weekly exclaiming they've lost an email. Go to their machine and do a search and it usually turns up pretty quickly. Sometimes they've got auto-archiving set up and didn't realise this moves items from their mailbox to a PST. I always do this at their workstation because it shows I'm not doing any "IT Magic" (i.e restoring from backup while claiming it's their fault). Not that I distrust users at all..... :) – Ben Pilbrow Sep 09 '10 at 20:43
  • it's an issue where the email shows up on his PDA (blackberry), but doesn't exist in exchange. I've confirmed it's not exchange rules, or a setting on the PDA (i.e. delete mail off server after downloading). He also has problems with attachments. We've paid out the ass to RIM (no pun intended) and they pointed at microsoft, we paid microsoft and they pointed at RIM. At this point I need to confirm that it's not the mailbox to escalate further with either company. – I.T. Support Sep 09 '10 at 20:58
  • also, it's the CEO we're talking about here :) – I.T. Support Sep 09 '10 at 20:59

2 Answers2

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You can try offloading the contents of the mailbox to a PST, deleting the mailbox (or the whole LDAP account), recreating the account, and dropping the PST contents back into the new account. The problems is ensuring that you get the entire contents (Calendar, tasks, etc) intact. It's very likely that they will lose or have problems with their calendar. (I think especially their recurring meetings; they may need to be recreated...)

Have you tried running EseUtil on that datastore? http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998249(EXCHG.80).aspx

gWaldo
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  • Is there a way to run the utility on a specific mailbox, or just the entire MB DB? – I.T. Support Sep 10 '10 at 17:23
  • I think you have to do it on the entire datastore – gWaldo Sep 10 '10 at 17:40
  • We attempted a restore from Backup Exec, it failed twice before I employed a backup PST of all items. We rebuilt the mailbox from scratch (restoring all items from the PST) and all was well. We have yet to notice any issues synching the blackberry PDA to the exchange box. – I.T. Support Sep 27 '10 at 15:59
  • Wow. Sounds like it was painful... – gWaldo Sep 27 '10 at 16:51
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Depending on your version of Backup Exec and whether you have taken advantage of the feature, "brick-level" backup/restore may do the trick.

The possible "gotcha" is that older versions of Backup Exec did have some "bugs" with their "brick-level" functionality.

user48838
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