Exchange 2000 offline defrag of 1 store while 2 stores online

I have an exchange server with 60GB mailboxstore \ 2 GB mailboxStore \ 5Gb mailboxstore... I have 3 GB left.

I moved all the mailboxes from to the smaller stores. Now since this is the default one, I do not want to delete it. so I was thinking of offline defrag..... I need to do this while the other two are still online. This is what I plan to do, please let me know if I need something else:
1) dismount the mailboxstore 60GB (which is the one I want to defrag)
2) Copy Priv1.* to another machine with plenty of space and run eseutil /d /p <database name>
3) Once done. I will rename the orig to .old or something and copy the new files which should be very small to the original location.
4) Mount the mailbox store back.

The question is, would the other stores be ok and remain online with no issue. Do I have to do anything with the transaction logs. Would the store mount in this case.
Thanks,
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onlinerackAsked:
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mass2612Connect With a Mentor Commented:
What you have here sounds ok to me, If you dismount one store i.e. the 60GB store it will have no affect on the other stores. This is one of the benefits of having multiple stores so that you can complete maintenance or restores that do not affect every user. One thing I always reommend it to complete a backup first. I'd make sure you have a known good backup of all stores NTBackup will do the job. I normally wouldn't recommend completing this during business hours either just in case something does go wrong. Its unlikely but things do happen. The transaction log files will sort themselves out when you do a backup of the stores they will be committed to the database.

This is a good article with step by step info - http://www.petri.co.il/defragment_exchange_2000_2003_server_databases.htm
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onlinerackAuthor Commented:
So the exchange services will remain running, only the default mailbox store will be offline. the other two will remain online while the defrag is taking place on a different server.
Once the defrag is done, I will copy it over and mournt the mailboxstore  back online (while the other two are running)

Q2. Backup takes about 12hours to run.... this store has nothing on it except the system attendant. (do have I have to do an offline defrag or can I not dismount it, rename the priv1.* to Priv1old.* and mount it.... would that mess things up. (just a thought)  I have nothing on there anyway.

should I use  esutil /d /p priv1.edb
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mass2612Commented:
YIf you want to re-claim the white space in the sotre and keep this store then you need to complete the defrag. To be honest if your aim is to remove this store in the end anyway I would simply let the backup run on the next schedule, dismount it, if you must to free space move the associated files for that particular store to a temp location and then monitor and test everything. If you have no issues after say 10-15 days you can pretty much say that you should be ok to delete the store.

This has some info on deleting stores. It refers to a front end server but its the same principle. If you dismount the store and see no issues then you can be pretty safe to delete it but as I said test and onitor before hand especially since your still running Exchange 2000.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/guides/E2k3SecHardGuide/226dbfa1-a75c-4d01-bdde-14321b22b743.mspx?mfr=true

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onlinerackAuthor Commented:
Thank you mass2612 .
I did an offline defrag on the store and everything is good. thank you again for your quick responses.
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