Recover Exchange 2007 after Migration and Coexistence with 2013

I recently upgraded exchange 2007 to 2013. I ran a coexistence until all the mailboxes were migrated. Everything was working great until the database volume on the 2013 server died. I lost the entire migrated database without time to make a backup. The old database is still in its original location and the 2007 server is still fully intact, but all configurations point to the 2013 server.

Is it possible to restore the original 2007 server with the original database?

Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks in advance

August 20th, 2015 9:04am

Have you got a backup of the database in 2007 from before the users where migrated? If so you could possibly use that backup and restore the database to a recovery storage group in 2007 and get the data back in to 2007. Without giving it to much thought I guess that you have to move the users back to 2007 before you can merge the data in to their current mailboxes. Has the users been given a new empty mailbox in 2013?
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August 20th, 2015 9:31am

While the 2007 database is still in place if as you say you migrated the data to 2013 the resulting 2007 EDB is more then likely empty.   That said I would do the following

1. Dismount the 2007 EDB and make an offline copy

2. Download our DigiScope product http://www.lucid8.com/product/digiscope.asp and get a DEMO license that will allow you to open the offline database to see what is actually within

3. if there is still data within you can use DigiScope to import that data directly back into the 2013 EDB

4. if the DB is blank then the next action to take would be to restore the last known 2007 Backup to the 20017 server and then repeat steps 1-3

Let me know if you have any additional questions

August 20th, 2015 11:41am

Hi

But how were you flushing the logs when you were doing mailbox migrations? Did you not setup a backup to run at all? Are you saying you had no backups during your transition period?

There are 3rd party tools that allow you to read the edb file and extract the mail to PST but you can also go the recovery route on your 2007 server.

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August 21st, 2015 6:02am

You know another option that just may save you is IF your users were operating Outlook in cached mode you have a poor mans backup of your data and can recover my having them connect to Outlook in offline mode, export to PST and then use those PST's to import back into the 2013 DB
August 21st, 2015 8:43am

Hi,

Generally, we can recover a lost server by using the Setup /m:RecoverServer switch in Microsoft Exchange Server 2013. Most of the settings for a computer running Exchange 2013 are stored in Active Directory. The /m:RecoverServer switch rebuilds an Exchange server with the same name by using the settings and other information stored in Active Directory.

Please refer to the following article to get the detailed information about recover preparation and steps:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Dd876880%28v=EXCHG.150%29.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396

Regards,

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August 23rd, 2015 11:23pm

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