Starting Exchange Server with a blank Information Store

Starting Exchange Server with a blank Information Store

There are some situations where starting Microsoft Exchange with a blank database may be necessary. In my line of work, I run across a large amount of businesses that have had their Exchange Private Information Store corrupted and the whole organizations Email capabilities halted as well. Quite often, getting the users back up and running takes precedence over getting the data back. Don’t get me wrong; the data is still extremely important, however not having email capability can stop some businesses day to day operations dead in their tracks.

In a perfect world, there would and should be a backup Exchange server just waiting to take over in case of a catastrophic event. But in reality, that is rarely the case. Rather than wait a complete day or two, or even longer, for the systems administrator to get the Exchange database recovered, a viable alternative is to restart the information store with a blank database and import the data back in when it is recovered.

There may be other reasons for wanting to create a blank database as well. You may have an Exchange server that is years old, with tons of residual data from users no longer at the company. You may need to free up disk space on your server. You may have a database with minor corruption and decide to ExMerge your data out and import it back in to a clean corruption-free database. Whatever the reason, make sure you have a complete plan of action and be sure to backup your data in case you run into difficulties. The following article explains how to create a new database with Exchange Server.

To start Exchange Server with a blank Information Store:

1. Locate the Exchange database directory and transaction log directory
   1. Open Exchange System Manager
   2. Navigate to Administrative Groups->First Administrative Group->Servers->servername
   3. Underneath servername click First Storage Group and then Action->Properties
   4. Transaction Log location will be listed on the General tab. Note this location (Image 1d)
   5. Navigate under First Storage Group to your Mailbox Store and click Action->Properties
   6. Click the Database tab to note the Exchange Database and Exchange Streaming Database locations (Image 1f)
   7. Do the same for the Public Store

Image 1d	Image 1f

2. Stop the Exchange Information Store (IS) if it is currently running
   1. Click on Start->Programs->Administrative Tools and then on Services or you can go to Computer Management by Right-Clicking on My Computer and choosing “Manage”

      i. If using Computer Management, drill down to Services and Applications, and then Services underneath that

   2. In the right window of the Services or Computer Management console, locate Microsoft Exchange Information Store
   3. If it’s status is listed as “Started”, Right-Click it and choose “Stop” (Image 2c)
   4. It may give you a message stating that dependency services such as Microsoft Exchange Event will need to stop as well. Choose “Yes” to continue stopping the IS

Image 2c

3. Rename database and transaction log directories and create new ones
   1. Rename the database location MDBDATA directory to MDBDATA-old (Image 3a)
   2. Create a new MDBDATA directory
   3. Rename the transaction log MDBDATA directory to MDBDATA-old (if location is different from the database location)
   4. Create a new MDBDATA directory for the transaction logs (Image 3d)

Image 3a	Image 3d

4. Start the Exchange Information Store service
5. Create new data files
   1. From Exchange System Manager navigate to Administrative Groups->First Administrative Group->Servers->servername->First Storage Group
   2. Click on the Mailbox Store and then on Action->Mount Store (Image 5b)
   3. You will receive a message stating that mounting this store will force the creation of an empty database, choose “Yes” to continue (Image 5c)
   4. The Store should mount, give you a message stating it successfully mounted and the data files should be created in the MDBDATA directory. (Images 5d1 & 5d2)
   5. Follow the same steps for the Public database

 

 

Image 5b
Image 5c
Image 5d1	Image 5d2

6. Test and Verify
   1. Verify the data files were created in the MDBDATA directory
   2. Check the Event Log for any errors
   3. Test connection to the Exchange server from Outlook

File Undelete When Overwritten

Overwriting a file, can I get it back?

 

In a recent data loss nightmare I had a customer call and state that they had a file on a jump drive, as well as a copy on the desktop. They used the process of moving the most current file to the jump drive to get the excel file back and forth from work. In a most unfortunate turn of events the customer had accidentally copied the OLDER version over the newer version.

 

His question to me was if we had some kind of software that would help him recover the file. The answer is no, there is no software that can fix this problem; once you overwrite a file it is gone. All of the information we would use to get to the file has been over written with the older file. There are a couple exceptions to this.

 

One would be QuickBooks files; Intuit may be able to still harvest some data from your drive. Another situation is a large data base file, especially if the one you copy over it is much smaller, a data recovery company like ours may be able to pull records off. For the most part though I would recommend you don’t OVERWRITE files when copy from one media to another just # them and once you are sure you have the right data delete the previous version. This tip will have a ton of headaches.

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