Download exchange mailboxes

what version of exchange is the on premise? you could possibly export the whole mailboxes to PSt via powershell but you will need to start some services to get the mailbox data.

Is it a VM? if so and you have access to the console you could disconnect the network , connect to the console and start at least the information store (may need other services)

Exchange 2010 standard. It's on a VM. I rather a third party tool if it's easier. If not the normal Microsoft way is fine for me.

the powershell command if you going to do the MS way is

New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox ITFanatic -FilePath "\\SERVER01\PSTFileShare\ITFanatic.pst"                           

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make sure you have full permissions to the share where you dump it otherwise the command fails

the share can be on the local server

Hi,

I would consider exporting *all* the mailboxes to PSTs while you are at it, then you can archive those PSTs in case you ever need to do the same again.

To do that from PowerShell (I would recommend against using any third-party tools on an Exchange Server ever):

ForEach ($MailBox in (Get-Mailbox)) { New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox $MailBox -FilePath "\\Backupserver\PSTs\$($MailBox.Alias).pst" -BadItemLimit 50 -AcceptLargeDataLoss ;while ((Get-MailboxExportRequest -mailbox $MailBox | ? {$_.Status -eq “Queued” -or $_.Status -eq “InProgress”})) { Sleep 180 } }

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The 'Sleep 180' is a three minute pause between each export - I have had problems in the past running them without a gap.

Change the location (\\BackupServer\PSTs\) to whatever suits, but make sure you have plenty of space there (I normally go for at least twice the size of the total mailboxes as reported by Exchange).

You can go without the '-BadItemLimit 50' and '-AcceptLargeDataLoss' but you'll probably have errors - I usually go with them, and if I want to be really sure, I run it twice to have two separate backups to archive.

All the usual caveats about requiring sufficient permissions at all points in the process of course.

Depending on the volume of data / emails, it might take a long time, but usually I don't care, I just set it off and let it run over a weekend or whatever.

Hope that helps,

Alan.

Which services do I need to turn on since I have them all disabled?

I would pull the network cable from the machine, re-enable all the services you disabled, reboot, run the above command, then disable the services again, reboot again, and plug in the network cable while it restarts.

Alan.