charrigan
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NTBackup not copying Exchange mailboxes
I have a SBS 2003 server with exchange running the pop connector. I am running NTBackup every night to an external hard drive. The backups are running correctly and all of the files including system state are backing up and there are no errors in the event viewer.
However, under the exchange first storage group on the backup file their is nothing showing backed up for the user mailbox data - is this being backed up somewhere else or being skipped for some reason?
However, under the exchange first storage group on the backup file their is nothing showing backed up for the user mailbox data - is this being backed up somewhere else or being skipped for some reason?
if you let your computer idle after your back everything up it cache's everthing in your RAM so if you just shut down your system completely it'll show mail and all. this includes your external.
Do you know where the backup log (NTBackup log, not the event viewer) is located? It should indicate if you are getting a good backup of the exchange stores. It's usually located in something like:
"Documents and Settings\User_Name\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows NT\NTbackup\Data"
Depending on your explorer settings, some of these folders might be hidden unless you enable them.
The MS backup utility won't display the details of the files in these directories. That's just how it's designed. You should rely on the logs, maybe test restorations.
If you know the actual files you are looking for, you might be able to see them by browsing down the drive instead of the storage group in ntbackup.
When you restore, you would have to dismount the information store then just check the appropriate boxes in NTBackup for the Microsoft Information Store. As far as seeing individual mailboxes, I don't personally know how to get that kind of detail out of NTBackup on an Exchange system. I've used it for more of a protection against total loss rather than selective restoration.
"Documents and Settings\User_Name\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows NT\NTbackup\Data"
Depending on your explorer settings, some of these folders might be hidden unless you enable them.
The MS backup utility won't display the details of the files in these directories. That's just how it's designed. You should rely on the logs, maybe test restorations.
If you know the actual files you are looking for, you might be able to see them by browsing down the drive instead of the storage group in ntbackup.
When you restore, you would have to dismount the information store then just check the appropriate boxes in NTBackup for the Microsoft Information Store. As far as seeing individual mailboxes, I don't personally know how to get that kind of detail out of NTBackup on an Exchange system. I've used it for more of a protection against total loss rather than selective restoration.
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You can use a microsoft utility exmerge to script exporting each mailbox to a pst and then you can back these files up to external storage using ntbackup.
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My mistake - MS still does not support individual mailbox backups in Exchange 2007 but they do have additional methods of achieving the same thing. Yes it is true that individual mailbox backups are slow but they are far from useless.
There cold be something that is corrupted in one of the boxes. Check the error log and it should tell you.
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