Help!I have this error message which I've been monitoring while we're attempting to use a 3rd party email archiving software (PAM4Exchange by Metalogix). The procedure is that the software is supposed to take original emails out of the store, archive them, and put a stub in its place in the user's mailbox. Well, since we started we had 150GB - it's now at 184GB! They said that the database size should've went down after the defrag and I've determined that the online defrag is occuring. But the size keeps going up!Event Type:InformationEvent Source:MSExchangeIS Mailbox StoreEvent Category:General Event ID:1221Date:12/9/2009Time:7:00:01 AMUser:N/AComputer:ZMAILDescription:The database "First Storage Group\Mailbox Database" has 36970 megabytes of free space after online defragmentation has terminated. I really don't want to have to do an offline defrag because this is the only email server we have and any downtime is very stressful! Any suggestions??

Other then offline Defrag, never heard of any other tool which can really defrag the databse effectively. Though online maintainence do really the defrag but they never truncate it, so the size remains the same but it improves the performance.One thing that you can do is moving the mail boxes between stores and that willl delete the white spaces. Even running exmerge (exchangh 2003) , first export and then import it back will also do the trick.Move mail box will give you the down time for that particular mail box. So i think that will be a good option for you.Raj

So to defrag a 184GB database, do you know how long it'd take roughly?Should I stop the online maintenance schedule while doing the offline defrag?

One thing you need to know is that when you do a defrag, you will need twice the space. The defrag creates a temporary database, and does not delete the old one until it verifies that the database contains no errors. So you will need at least the same amount of free space as the database.

One thing you need to know is that when you do a defrag, you will need twice the space. The defrag creates a temporary database, and does not delete the old one until it verifies that the database contains no errors. So you will need at least the same amount of free space as the database. The general rule of thumb is that you need 110% freeof the database size available.Note that is 110% of the actual database - not including the white space on disk.http://support.microsoft.com/kb/255035

Regaining 37GB from a 184GB store probably isnt worth it.If anything, I would look to creating multiple storage groups with one mailbox store in each and spread out that 184GB by moving mailboxes till its empty. Then dismount the store, delete the files on disk and remount and you will have an empty, clean store.

It really isn't worth the hassle of 30+ hours of downtime for an offline defrag. Move the mailboxes to a new database in a new store really helped. In fact, the server performance is better since last night. Will continue on this path. Thanks!