Exchange 2010 Archive Mailbox moved to another database but copy still remains in the source

ExchangeGroup
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Dear All,

I have moved some users archive mailboxes in Exchange 2010 to another database. They have actually copied themselves to the second database meaning no space has been freed on the drive hosting the original database. Also I do not have the "New Local Move Request" option available for these users too as they are still showing up with the green arrow in exchange management console.

Today, I set the Mailbox retention for the Archive database to 2 days as I thought it could be waiting for this time to expire before mailboxes are cleared from the database. I am not sure if this is the problem.

Thanks for any help on this matter.
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IT Service Manager
Top Expert 2012
Commented:
Please refer the below

When mailboxes are moved from an Exchange 2010 SP1 database to any other database, Exchange doesn't fully delete the mailbox from the source database immediately upon completion of the move. Instead, the mailbox in the source mailbox database is switched to a soft-deleted state. Mailbox data can be accessed during a mailbox restore operation using the MailboxRestoreRequest cmdlet set. The soft-deleted mailboxes are retained in the source database until either the deleted mailbox retention period expires

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd298174(v=exchg.141).aspx
Neil RussellTechnical Development Lead

Commented:
The following will remove he "Deleted" orriginal for you safely.

Get-MailboxStatistics -Database "YourDataBaseName" |  foreach {Remove-StoreMailbox -Database $_.database -Identity $_.mailboxguid -MailboxState SoftDeleted}
ExchangeGroup

Author

Commented:
Thanks very much Rajkumar for providing insight into the matter and Neilsr for the quick fix. I will try it and update you guys.

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