I am working with an Exchange 2003 server. The server reached and perhaps went slightly over it's 75GB database size limit. The .edb and .stm added up to well over 80GB. Adding up the individual mailbox sizes using System Manager showed there wasn't much "white space" either. I decided to use Exmerge to archive out nearly all of the data from the Exchange server. I left behind only the calendars, notes, contacts, journal, etc... After running ExMerge multiple times in progressive date ranges (so as to avoid the 2GB cap on the ExMerge PST files) the users' mailboxes were reduced from as high as 14GB down to only 10MB. I estimate there may be as little as 100MB of data remaining in the mailbox store. So I have a database that now has about 60GB of white space and about 100MB of data. After running an offline defrag of the Exchange database the priv1.edb dropped from 80GB to 60GB. I was expecting it to go under 1GB for sure. What's up? Would it help to run the defrag again? Thanks for you help.

How much whitespace is available according to events 1221? http://support.microsoft.com/kb/186291 That is how much you can recover at a minimum. If you have deleted item and mailbox retention set ( which you most likely do), then that will determine how long Exchange retains data until it releases it. If you set those values to 0 and run IS Maintenance, it should grab the white space. Note that your way of detemining how much space was available was not valid. IN 2003 SP2, its not the actual size of the stores that cannot exceed 75GB, its the logical size - whitespace is not counted in that equation. Did the event logs fire warnings that you had exceeded the limit? http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998066(EXCHG.65).aspx Note also that adding up mailboxes isnt the correct way to go about that either :) You dont account for Single Instance Storage, incorrect values in ESM and other "stuff" that determines the true size of the store.

On Tue, 22 Feb 2011 01:33:02 +0000, Kevin433 wrote: > > >I am working with an Exchange 2003 server. The server reached and perhaps went slightly over it's 75GB database size limit. The .edb and .stm added up to well over 80GB. Adding up the individual mailbox sizes using System Manager showed there wasn't much "white space" either. > >I decided to use Exmerge to archive out nearly all of the data from the Exchange server. I left behind only the calendars, notes, contacts, journal, etc... > >After running ExMerge multiple times in progressive date ranges (so as to avoid the 2GB cap on the ExMerge PST files) the users' mailboxes were reduced from as high as 14GB down to only 10MB. > >I estimate there may be as little as 100MB of data remaining in the mailbox store. So I have a database that now has about 60GB of white space and about 100MB of data. After running an offline defrag of the Exchange database the priv1.edb dropped from 80GB to 60GB. I was expecting it to go under 1GB for sure. What's up? > >Would it help to run the defrag again? How much free space is reported in the 1221 event in the application log? --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP

Hi Kevin, Any updates? Frank Wang TechNet Subscriber Support in forum If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.com Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Thank you, this is the answer that helped me the most. I didn't know about mailbox retention, and setting the value to 0 is exactly what I needed. Thanks again!

Thanks for asking Frank. AndyD_ answered my question perfectly above. Sorry I did not respond sooner!