Backed up mailboxes with exmerge on MS-Exch 5.5 now users lost contact

[anyichux]

Hi All,

I backed up my exchange 5.5 EE using Exmerge now after reinstalling exchange 5.5 SE all my users lost their contacts and calender. Does anybody know how I can recover from this situation.

Does anyone also know a link where I can get a good copy of Exmerge

 

[justin2000]

anychix

The version you have is OK - if I remember correctly, when you do a restore of mailboxes by what you did you lose the contacts and calendar information.

What you needed to do was the whole IS backup, then restore it back once exchange has been re-installed.

 

[anyichux]

Justin2000,

Thanks, but I did not get the option for backing up the the entire information store when I was using Exmerge. How can I do this properly, just if I have to do it again?

 

[justin2000]

anyichux,

what i meant was, you should have used backup software to backup the IS and restore it using the backup software - any will do, even NTbackup.

 

[Truedus]

You should not be using exmerge for backup purposes. Use some sort of backup software and backup your IS. Might want to do some more research and backup other files like your dir.edb too.
Exmerge should be used to clean your site of virus mail and the like.

 

[exchangerecovery]

Actually using exmerge.exe you should be able to retain all the settings in that are in your mailboxes. You must check in options : "Extract the following data from the sources store and import into target store, users messages and folders" If this option is checked everything is coppied including calandar contacts ect......

 

[bigdog92]

or you could just make a batch file that stops all the exchange services and then copies the priv, pub, and dir .edb files then restarts the services. i find that supposide backup software (arc serve, backup exec etc)is just a waste of money. ntbackup with an offline backup is great imho.