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retrieving contents of sent items and inbox from Exchange 2003 mailbox using recovery storage group

Everywhere I read about restoring mailboxes, I don't see what I need. I have a pretty simple scenario. A user leaves the company. He deletes all his sent items and his inbox before he leaves. Then he empties his deleted items. I've already attempted Tools -> Recover Deleted Items. Some of what I need is there, and some is not. Mostly, the sent items seem to not be there. I have nightly backups with this mailbox intact. I use the Small Business Server backup wizard which is basically just NTBackup.

So all I want to do is restore these two folders. The rest of the folders are intact. Step by step - what is my process here?

I figure I create a Recovery Storage Group and then restore the Exchange mailbox to a temporary folder. I have done these things have an UNmounted mailbox in the recovery storage group, but it won't mount. It gives me the error "an internal processing error occurred . . . id no. C1041724 Exchange System Manager"

Do I need to run an eseutil on the recovery storage group information store? Presuming I can get this to mount, do I do an exmerge and get the contents out of the PST file? What's the best way to proceed?

Thank you

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mass2612

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Jeffrey Kane - TechSoEasy

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Jeffrey Kane - TechSoEasy

One other possibility... if the user recently logged onto another workstation, the .ost file would still exist with the deleted emails. If this is true, then you can recover those items by unplugging that workstation from the network and then logging in and opening Outlook. (so it won't have a chance to sync). Then, move all the items to a .pst file instead.

The above is based on a wild chance... but thought I'd mention it anyhow.

Jeff
TechSoEasy

Dave Messman

ASKER

I made this much more complex than it needed to be. I was able to retrieve the information store, but it said it was in a state of dirty shutdown. I ended up running eseutil /p on it (which took 1 hour and 45 mins - one of my problems was I was too impatient with it) and after it was up, I was able to do an exmerge. Thanks for the help.