How to Recover a Purged Mailbox from an Online Backup Using the Original Database Server

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This topic explains how to recover a purged mailbox from an online backup using the original database server. Ordinarily, recovering a deleted Microsoft® Exchange mailbox is a straightforward operation. If the mailbox still exists in the original database, you can right-click it in Exchange System Manager and connect it to any Active Directory account that you want. This has the effect of "undeleting" the mailbox. You can then access items as if the mailbox had never been deleted.

However, if you have purged a mailbox (or items from it) that must be recovered, you must then restore a backup of the database that still contains both the mailbox and the items. If the mailbox is still in its original connected state, a recovery storage group can be used to extract purged items. For more information, see Recovering Deleted Items or Purged Mailboxes Using a Recovery Storage Group in Exchange Server 2003.

Procedure

How to recover a purged mailbox from an online backup using the original database server

  1. In Exchange System Manager, create a recovery storage group, and add the database that you intend to restore.

  2. Restore the database to the recovery storage group.

  3. Mount and disconnect from the database to leave it in Clean Shutdown state. You can run the command Eseutil /mh [database filename].edb to verify the state.

  4. If the server has the capacity for an additional storage group, create a new storage group, and then add a mailbox database to it. The logical names of the storage group and database do not matter, but the database file names for the .edb and .stm files should match the file names of the recovery storage group database.

    Note

    If the names do not match, you must rename the recovery storage group database files. You should also configure the new database on the same logical drive as the recovery storage group database files. Do not mount the database after creating it.

  5. In Microsoft Windows® File Manager, move the recovery storage group database files into the paths designated for the new database. If the file names of the recovery storage group database files do not match the file names that you chose for the new database, rename them now.

  6. In Exchange System Manager, in the normal storage group open the Properties dialog box for the database. On the Database tab, select the This database can be overwritten by a restore check box.

  7. Mount the database.

  8. Under the database node, click Mailboxes, and in the right pane find the purged mailbox (which is now a disconnected mailbox). Right-click the disconnected mailbox, and then click Reconnect to reconnect it to the appropriate Active Directory account.

After the mailbox is connected to an Active Directory® account, you can log on to the mailbox with Microsoft Office Outlook® or another client, use ExMerge to extract data, or even use the Move Mailbox task to move the mailbox back to its original location.