Recently moved all users from one db1 to db2. db1 still is 26GB but has no mailboxes configured to it. What I'm wondering is if I offline defrag db1 will I still require 120% free space to process? I was originally thinking I'd just delete this mail store and recreate but if I can process the offline defrag without the normal required free space it might be easier. Thanks

Look in the event log for the event that talks about background maintenance to see how much 'white space' is available. This gives you a rough idea of how much the database will shrink by. It will probably be less than 26 GB because of deleted item retention. And sometimes there are space leaks which affect the amount of white space, but this leaked space will certainly be cleaned up by offline defrag. You can dump the space usage in the database with `eseutil -ms`, but understanding the output is tricky. You should probably forget I even mentioned it. -martin

Wouldn't the whole db1 be white space? Other then the systemmailbox and SMTP mailboxes there's nothing else configured to this mail store. The main thing I want to confirm is the need for disk space to perform the defrag. It would seem that I wouldn't need the 120% free space since db1 is empty. I've never performed an offline defrag and don't want to inadvertently fill up a partition on my assumption. Thanks

To be honest, I don't deal with store administration much, which is why I don't know if the move-mailbox will get rid of the deleted items or not. I used to work on the core database engine side of things, which is why I suggested looking for the online-maintenance white space event. The 120% figure is given for the worst case where there is no white space, and there are some pathological cases where the database can increase in size, and a bit of overhead for the temp database. So yes, if there is 25 GB of white space in your 26 GB database, you should be fine with3 GB of free space (and probably less than that). If it does fill up, eseutil will delete the tempoary file. You can also specify the temporary file on another drive. -martin