We are moving a mailbox database to a new server. Both old and new server used the same Exchange 2010 version.

When setting up the new server we are trying to direct Exchange to look at the old database which is on a separate drive on the same system as the new Exchange setup.

When we try to setup the database location for Exchange to read it states that the location is invalid/not accessible. The main drive in the computer is "C" and the drive with all of the mailbox database id on drive "F".

The reason for this "odd" setup is that the database is almost 1TB in size and the "C" drive is only 300GB so it is not big enough for us to put the database where Exchange wants to look for it.

Any suggestions???

You can't have Exchange to read the database from network drive. it has to be locally mounted on the system itself.

You can use Database Portability feature of the Exchange 2010 here. There are certain key points that you need to consider...

Check below couple of articles for more detail...

Move a Mailbox Database Using Database Portability

Exchange Server 2010: Using Database Portability for Disaster Recovery

No. The database is on drive "F". The database is approx. 975GB in size.

What I am doing is our school is separating from its parent university and has switched to Google Apps. for Education for employee email services (Not my choice). As a backup plan we got a full dump of our Exchange database from the parent university we are separating from and I am trying to migrate it into a Exchange server so that we can recall past emails if needed.

This Exchange server will never be used in production nor connected to our network. It is currently on a vlan that has only limited connection to the internet as need and there is no MX records pointed to it.

No. The database is on drive "F". The database is approx. 975GB in size.

What I am doing is our school is separating from its parent university and has switched to Google Apps. for Education for employee email services (Not my choice). As a backup plan we got a full dump of our Exchange database from the parent university we are separating from and I am trying to migrate it into a Exchange server so that we can recall past emails if needed.

This Exchange server will never be used in production nor connected to our network. It is currently on a vlan that has only limited connection to the internet as need and there is no MX records pointed to it.

No. The database is on drive "F". The database is approx. 975GB in size.

What I am doing is our school is separating from its parent university and has switched to Google Apps. for Education for employee email services (Not my choice). As a backup plan we got a full dump of our Exchange database from the parent university we are separating from and I am trying to migrate it into a Exchange server so that we can recall past emails if needed.

This Exchange server will never be used in production nor connected to our network. It is currently on a vlan that has only limited connection to the internet as need and there is no MX records pointed to it.

I would look at 3rd party software and use it when you need to extract data to a pst.

http://www.quest.com/recovery-manager-for-exchange/

http://www.krollontrack.com/software/powercontrols/

http://www.lucid8.com/

A good application you can also explore at (http://www.exchangemailboxtopst.org/) while need to extract mailbox data into PST. It is equipped with many other salient features that helps to resolve several exchange server issues in prompt attempt.

A good application you can also explore at (http://www.exchangemailboxtopst.org/) while need to extract mailbox data into PST. It is equipped with many other salient features that helps to resolve several exchange server issues in prompt attempt.