Restore database question

[Dave]

I have a user that erased his calendar and contacts using his Palm Pilot.
That was about 10 days ago and I'm now under the gun to get them back. I
have 2 backup tapes with good exchange backups. 2 nights ago I attempted to
our only good spare machine to restore to (build it exactly like the main
server etc...). I feel like my only option left is to backup the current
database (i'm going to do it twice, once using BackupExec and then using
Exmerge to .pst files) and then restore the backup tape from about 10 days
ago and get the data he requires. Once I get his calendar and contacts I
would then go back and restore the backup with the current email. Is this
practical? I know its dangerous to mess with operational email like this but
I really have no option (there are only about 20 users by the way - 3.5 GB
of email). Let me know your thoughts....

PS - for the VIPs at that firm I'm going to start doing brick level backups
also.

Thanks
Dave

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

Do the recovery/restore on another server....doesn't have to be identical
hardware.

Do you not have deleted item retention enabled? You should....

[Dave]

The SCSI card that the backup drive uses has a PCI type slot that no other
machines in our office has. I figure if i have good .pst backups, if things
totally bomb I could just start fresh and import those.

I have the deleted items retained for 14 days, however, in this case it did
not work. I believe its because the Palm syncing software did not really
'delete' the items, but rather 'overwrote' them (with blank info).

"Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]"
<lanw...@heybuddy.donotsendme.unsolicitedmail.atyahoo.com> wrote in message
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[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

Get another SCSI card. They're cheap enough. It really is not usual to
destroy your existing Exchange stores & recover twice....

You may be right about DIR....but re Palm, if he's using Chapura
PocketMirror, does it not have an archive function? What conduit is he
using?

[Dave]

As a followup, the 'double' recover method worked. It took about 3 1/2
hours total with a 3.5 GB exchange database. The steps I took were this:

1. Backed up current Exchange database using Backup Exec 9
2. Also ran exmerge and export all 25 or so mailboxes to .pst files which I
copied to another PC on the network (was a paranoid or what?)
3. Stopped Exchange services and went to c:\program files\exchsrvr\mdbdata
and renamed all .log files to .log.old.
4. Started the Information Store service
5. Configured mailbox store and public store to be overwritten (in Exchange
Manager I dismounted the store and went into database properties tab and
selected that option).
6. Started the BackupExec program
7. Selected the Exchange Information Store I wanted recovered from the
catalog (and inserted proper tape)
8. In BackupExec I cleared the "No Loss Restore" option on the Exchange
restore section. (when this is cleared only the restored log files willl be
applied to the database)
9. In Backup Exec restore options for Exchange - created Temporary Location
for log and patch files (C:\temp\exchange)
10. In Backup Exec restore options for Exchange - selected Commit after
restore completes (this is because all the data was on one tape - a full
backup, not incremental)
11. Restored

At this point the data operation ended successfully. However the mailbox
store would not mount. I found some great notes a Microsoft engineer had
sent me in a past Exchange recovery situation. Her email actually went into
great detail, but I've narrowed it down to the 3 I used. Here is what I had
to do to get the stores to mount.

12. Cut E00.log and E00.chk out of c:\program files\exchsrvr\mdbdata
directory and pasted to a temp location.
13. Ran the following eseutil command. ESEUTIL /CC c:\temp\exchange
(remember this was created in step 9 above).
14. Stores now mounted successfully.

Hope this helps anyone in an Exchange recovery situation. Veritas document
235756 "Disaster Recovery Procedure for Exchange 2000" is very helpful.

"Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]"
<lanw...@heybuddy.donotsendme.unsolicitedmail.atyahoo.com> wrote in message

news:Osiqeqdu...@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

Glad you got it working! I still say, get another SCSI card so you never
ever have to do this again...it's really a lot cheaper in the long run.

Veritas indeed rocks.

[johnpe...@gmail.com]

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