More Exchange delights..

[Omar Senussi]

Hello once again!

Briefly.. SBS2K3 There was a system crash.. not sure but looks suspiciously like a virus..

Had to restore from a 3 week old image of the C drive. So far so good. Exchange was being backed up through the SBS backup system..

Now in the meantime, mail has come in for the clients.. Exchange was active and client needed to get on with their work.. Most old mail in that 3 week period was om a workstation working in cached mode...

The question here is the following.. If I'd wanted to, could I have recovered mail from the image I created of the "dead" installation (wouldn't boot.. but all data intact)

If so, which folder(s) would I have needed?

[Rune J. Winje · Accepted solution]

I recommend you to look into the "Dial Tone" restore method. It allows the users to quickly resume sending and receiving mails.

It does mean some additional work related to the restore of the old data, but that is usually less important seen from the user's perspective...

http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Exchange-Dial-tone-Restore-Method-Part1.html

If you are slightly paranoid, and it is sometimes wise to be when concerned with users that have important/business critical mails, then I additionally recommend users to work offline first, add a new personal folder in Outlook and copy their offline mails to this. Tis is just in case the offline cache wants to synchronize with a mew blank mailbox and becomes blank... in disaster recovery scenarios where the mail db itself has gone south, the OST file that users have can often mean the difference between recovering 0% and 80% of mails... There are also 3.rd party tools to save out the mails directly from an .OST file.


Cheers,
Rune

[Omar Senussi]

Hi Rune,
Thanks.. that was very helpful.. I shall study that with due diligence!

I presume that my Acronis image with the full structure of the C drive in it could be plundered for the folders needed in Exchange substructure.. could one simply stop exchange acd copy the folders over once the old image had been restored? .. that wa basically what I weas asking..

Cheers.. Omar