Exchange Server 2003 - Restore

[rs_sis]

Hi.... :S

I need some advice from the Exchange Server 2003 experts !

General info :
- windows server 2003
- exchange server 2003
- windows xp pro with office 2003
- 300 users/mailboxes.

Problem:
due to a hardware failure a exchange server database crashed.
the worst news was... there was no good backup of this database available.

we tried to recover the crashed database with eseutil program
after the recovery we were able to access our mailboxes again..

but the problem was not over yet... later we found out that all the e-mails that came with a attachement
were not able to open the attachement itself. it just shows a attachement icon but when you open it, its empty...

we created a new exchange server database, reconnected the users back again.
they were now able to send/receive mails again, just only missing the old mails before the crash.

since we had no time/other option left, we had to sent this crashed database to a
another company that is specialized in database recovery. they were able
to extract the data from EDB for PST. 300 mailbox were exported to a mobile harddisk.

today we just checked a few PST files by opening it via user data file option in Outlook.
the restore was indeed succesfully done... we were now able to open the e-mail-attachements...

now there was only one thing left....
We need to import these old mails with the working attachements from the PST files back again
and merge it with the new mails since the crash into the EDB, mailboxes.

in short... import from PST files and with merge the EDB database.

Solution ?
Does anyone knows a good software or a workaround to succesfully restore this database ?
Thanks for your help !

[freshfitz]

Go into outlook -> file -> import -> import from another program or file -> personal folder file .pst -> select the .pst for that user from the mobile backup import it to the exchange account hit send receive that will sync the local outlook with the exchange server. Repeat this for every user

[rs_sis]

Hi,

thanks for your answer, i was already aware of that solution..
its not really do-able since there are 300 users/mailbox..

well.. is there not a good recovery software available for this situation ?
something like "ontrack powercontrol" ** actually this software
is not able to read the pst files.. (can't import it, but the pst
loads fine in outlook) **
http://www.ontrackpowercontrols.com/library/PC-EX-infosheet.pdf

[freshfitz]

Wow that sucks been there done that, unfortunately is was only around 40 mailboxes so I just imported the .pst in each persons outlook. Have you looked into exmerge I could never get it to work, and it's ridiculous that Microsoft doesn't have more tools to work on an exchange database. I found 1 program to export the users mail from the .edb to .pst and it was like $700 bucks. '07 has a database recovery option in the toolbox that is supposed to merge 2 mailbox's from a 1st store and 2nd store .edb couldn't get that to work either but i guess that doesn't help you for exchange '03

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/174197

[rs_sis]

Hi,

thanks for your reply. yes I tried exmerge but it was not working
because the exported PST files had a different structure.
so there was no inbox, outbox, those maps were moved
to a another directory thats why we were not able to use exmerge.

We did the following:
I copied the (recovered) PST files to the NAS server,
shared the (recoverd) PST's to the users only.
I installed a new program on the machines, SYNC PST via share/GPO.
with this program and a script we were able to synchronize
between the user mailbox and the (recovered) PST files.

[elis]

Hello...
You need to download a software named - PDS Exchange database recovery software
i also used this software it really works