Hi We have 1 Exchange 2003 server with 2 mailbox stores in the same storage group. The size of the DB's are:\ Priv1 - 53GB Priv2 - 31GB I have just done an offline defrag on priv2, what I want to know is: 1 - If I move a Mailbox from priv1 to priv2 will it be 'tidied up' moving it to the other database? 2 - Would moving mailboxes out of it decrease the size and thus the amount of time to offline Defrag? 3 - Does the amount of time a defrag take depend on how 'dis-organised' the database is? Thanks Dave

1. I'm not sure what you mean by 'tidied up'? Moving mailboxes between databases will simply create white space in the original file and consume free space in the target file. 2. Moving mailboxes out will only introduce white psace intot he database which will be reclaimed during scheduled nightly maintenance operations. The EDB file itself will not decrease. I'm not sure if you'd see any decrease in processing time with eseutil. 3. From wht I've seen, the older the database, the longer it's taken to defrag so you can make the assumption that older=more fragmented.

Hi Thanks, That answers my question. I Think we'll have to add another HDD to the raid set. I kicked an offline Defrag off in the small hours this morning thinking it would be finished before the users logged in. The EDB is 31GB and STM is 19GB... Needless to say it is still going and I have a about 30-40 unhappy users! Fortunately the CEO and Managers on in the larger EDB! But of course the defrag has slowed down now that exchange is being used! How many hours would you expect a defrag of this size to take?

That largely depends on the hardware and disk subsystem performance; but I would never start that process in the morning, only after-hours or on weekends; it typically takes many hours on production databases. If you have the disk space, the easier way to accomplish this is to create a new mail store, (preferrably on a new disk array for performance reasons, but not required). Then simply move the mailboxes from the larger mail store into the new, empty mail store. As explained in this article, you will retain single-instance storage benefits, and will only inconvience the users during this acutal mailbox move process, which you can monitor. So instnead of all mailboxes being offline for the entire maintenace window, only 4 mailboxes will be offline at one time (the default setting for concurrent threads in the Move Mailbox wizard). This will create a fresh database with no wasted space which will be much smaller than your previous database (assuming there is white space inside that one to reclaim). Once all mailboxes are completely moved over you can simply delete the .EDB file for the original mail store while it is dismounted. Then either remount it (which will create a fresh, blank .EDB file) or remove the entire mail store if you plan to only have 2 on that server.

Thanks for your help. This is what we finally did. Installed another HDD into the server, unfortunately we couldn't add this to the raid set, so configured as single drive. Created a new store on the disk, and added a couple of users. Allowed the backup to backup the store, and then confirmed that it was successfull. With this done I have slowly procceded to move all other mailboxes into the new store. With this now complete I notice that the size of the STM has shrunk froim 19gb to 300mb! Trying to backup/move the old store, I discovered it was corrupt, and I couldn't even move the old STM at the file level. As all data has either been moved or extract (EXMERGE) I opted to delete the files. This has worked and all users haven't lost any emails.