Recovery of data from Exchange 5.5

I had a question recently from a friend at Microsoft about a client who had got into a bit of a pickle!

They needed to restore and email from a mailbox which was 5 years old, long since deleted and on Exchange 5.5.

They did have a backup from the month end, but no idea whether the mail actually was still available or whether it was deleted before month end.

I did a little research and with the help of a couple of other Exchange MVPs Paul Robichaux and Kevin Ball I think I have a solution! We will of course not find out until I get some feedback from my friend.

So my thoughts were as follows:

One option to get this back (if it exists) would be to use Ontrack PowerControls. I’ve not done it for a while, but essentially, the idea is you recover the full database from tape and then Ontrack can open it and extract the relevant email. Of course the full tool is not free although there is a free version which might just have enough to do what is needed or at least to help you understand if the email is actually available!

http://www.ontrackpowercontrols.com/resources/trial-downloads/

The other option could be interesting! I’m not 100% sure but I believe that if you have Exchange 2003 (possibly later but not sure) you could create a database and then dismount and delete the files. Then put the recovered database (.edb file) in the same location and name it the same as the dummy database file you just deleted. At this point mounting the database should prompt Exchange to upgrade the structure of the DB to Exchange 2003 and allow you to see the mailboxes within. You would then need to create a user account and link the relevant mailbox to that account. (Thanks to Paul for the tip here)

So with a bit of luck and possibly some purchasing of tools, assuming the mail wasn’t deleted before the month end back, it should be possible to get it back!

Update:

Having posted something similar on Twitter I received feedback saying the recovery via Exchange 2003 won’t work! So I tested it!! – Yup I actually installed NTT4 and Exchange 5.5.

What I have found so far is that Exchange 2003, will create an STM file but then won’t mount the database. I believe that this is probably due to the fact that they are different organisations as I didn’t carry out a migration to Exchange 2003 instead just installing separate Orgs. I will update later with more progress!

Cheers

Nathan

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3 Comments

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  By Troy Werelius, May 27, 2010 @ 4:07 pm

  Nathan, I think your going to run into issues with the datbase swap as outlined. One thing that comes to mind is that the guids will be different and Exchange is not going to like that. You are correct about thrid party tools being the answer here and you should check out Lucid8′s DigiScope which supports Microsoft Exchange 5.5, 2000, 2003, 2007 and 2010 and more importantly DigiScope has Project based licenses which are very afforable for one off projects like this. Anyway you should check it out I think you will be very please. http://www.lucid8.com/product/digiscope.asp

  Also if you want a quick overview of the product without having to read about it, check out this 7 minute flash demo http://l8downloads.com/FLASH/DSWEB/DigiScope_Overview.html

• 

  By Nathan Winters, May 30, 2010 @ 11:30 am

  Hi Troy,

  Thanks for the info. I think you’re right, it may have worked had I joined the 2003 org to the 5.5 org but who knows. To be honest I haven’t had a lot of time to play as I’ve moved onto some Exchange 2010 lab work.

  I will take a look at the DigiScope product. If you’re interested I might be able to write a review?

  Cheers
  Nathan

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  By exchange server 2003 mailbox Recovery, April 30, 2012 @ 8:20 am

  Everything is very open with a really clear clarification
  of the challenges. It was really informative.
  Your website is useful. Thanks for sharing!

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