Best way to archive old emails, Outlook 2003 & Exchange 2003

[wahnula]

Hello all,

I have come up with several scenarios to accomplish this task, bit I would like to find the BEST and most professional way to do this. I have (1) user that saves everything that ever crosses his email account. When I reformatted and upgraded his PC ALL of his old messages (not in the Exchange Store) were lost, some 6,000 of them (in one year). He saves all delivery confirmations, all communication of any sort.

My best guess is that he saved them locally to a .pst file because he says he clicked "over there" and then dragged and dropped his email into the directory. After format, the directory was gone. He currently has 200 MB of storage along with everyone else, no problems elsewhere.

I have plenty of storage space on the server (Win SBS Premium, Opteron x 2, 4Gb RAM,), but these archived emails are of questionable value and would like to refine his habits a little, while holding on to the "valuable" email. In other words, spool them off for his use, with little to no overhead for me or my server.

My first thought was to spool them off to a dedicated 1GB USB key, but from what I've read ".PSTs are evil" and the last thing I'd want is for his Mailbox Store to become a local .pst when I'm not looking.

Sorry for the long read, but I wanted to be as comprehensive as possible. Of course alternate suggestions are incredibly welcome.



Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[58sniper]

.pst files are evil. They're not supported anywhere other than on the local machine - so I wouldn't recommend putting them on a network share.

Two issues at play - user habits and company policies. Both need to be flexible. I'd start by creating a GPO that prevents them from creating .pst files. Then look at the limits.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[engjohn]

what you need is an appliance like ArcMail or an application like GFI MailArchiver.
Both will allow you to import all PSTs as well as keep an ongoing mail journal.

These will allow you to keep your users off PSTs and keep the exchange database manageable. They both allow users to logon to a web interface and search for their old mail, and recover to their mailbox as needed.

with the mail journal in real time you can set mailbox limits to something reasonable. This will keep exchange performing well and make your backups smaller and faster.

 

[58sniper]

Journaling does increase work the server must do. Also, journaling doesn't capture all data, so from a compliance or discovery aspect, it's not perfect.

Exchange will let you import all of the .pst files natively.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[wahnula]

OK, I'm a little lost here...I have no special needs or compliances, I have one user who does not know what a "delete" key looks like. He wants basically unlimited storage, and in his defense does he receive a lot of large files, mostly .pdfs for construction projects we don't win the bid on. I would delete them and move on (they can always be re-sent} but he wants to hold on to everything.

I'm looking at MailArchiver because that company also makes MailUtilities that offers a good spam option, but are there other user-based utilities?

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[Zelandakh]

Give him unlimited mailbox size and periodically dump older emails to PFs?

 

[Davetoo]

Have him save the PDF's to his disk, where they belong, and get them out of his email system, where they don't belong?

I'm Certifiable, not cert-ified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.

There are no more PDC's! There are DC's with FSMO roles!

 

[cckens]

Tony,
Don't listen to Pat... come... come to the Dark Side...
BWAHAHAHHAHAHA

Seriously, though, PSTs may be evil, but they can do some good if you're like me and underfunded and otherwise. If you absolutely must resort to PSTs and the user has a Network drive available (with space to handle it) I recommend getting the PST backup plug-in to Outlook to periodically copy the PST file to the Network drive. This can be considered best practice when you must resort to PSTs. No network PST, just a backup of the local and you (and the user) can control when and with what frequency this occurs. The plug-in waits til it reaches the time limit set, then activates when the user closes outlook. The user has the option of saying no at that time, or letting the plug-in continue to copy the file.
Sure it may take a while to finish with a gig-plus PST, but this is the price you pay for having large PSTs.

And yes, Pat, I am the devil! But I am also an additional point of view to the nay-say of using PSTs, the "devil's advocate" you might say (LOL)


cckens

"Not always my best shot, but I hit the target now and then"
-me

 

[58sniper]

I believe I called them the "scourge of the earth"...

I realize some people will still use them. But I'm on my soap box to minimize that number....

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[wahnula]

Thanks all for all the great answers, I have been out of commission for a few days and unable to check responses.

I think there is no "best answer" here...but I think a good compromise would be to double his Mailbox size (I'm kind of a benevolent dictatorship) and he must decide which half of the baby to keep...the rest will get spooled off to a CD/DVD in (ssshhh!!!) .pst files to be forever forgotten. Thanks again for all the great answers.

Tony

Users helping Users...