Defrag To Big.

[ankit0680]

Hello,
I need to defrag a an exchange store. I am running Exchange 2003 standard. Our Priv1.edb file is 55 GB and our streaming file is 18 GB. We need to do a offline defrag as we put limitations on our user mailboxes, and the EDB file shoudl really only be 25 GB. Problem is the drive only has 20 GB free, and MS is saying that I need 110 percent of database size for defrag. What i did was put a USB 2.0 200 GB drive on the machiine, now I wanto to defrag to that. That I cant get to run, but I read somewhere I can defrag to a different location ( my external drive) and then copy back to the original location it would work fine.
PLease HELP.

 

[Marcs41]

At todays prices, would you not just make your life easier and swap the drive for a bigger one? It takes a few minutes to do, and your troubles are gone.

Marc
[sub]If 'something' 'somewhere' gives 'some' error, expect random guesses or no replies at all.
Free Tip: The F1 Key does NOT destroy your PC![/sub]

 

[ankit0680]

Unfortunetly its not an option right now. Any Other Ideas.

 

[Marcs41]

If even something that is not an option, then the only other thing you can try, although NOT recommended on an USB drive!!!, is:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/270693/en-us

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/821915/en-us

Be warned! If your USB connections fails, you have a corrupt store!
Make VERY sure you have a working copy somewhere.

Marc
[sub]If 'something' 'somewhere' gives 'some' error, expect random guesses or no replies at all.
Free Tip: The F1 Key does NOT destroy your PC![/sub]

 

[Zelandakh]

Defrag from the current drive to the USB drive using /t. If it gets all the way through then you can copy over the top. But make sure you copy priv.* to somewhere else first just in case.

Before you do it though, I'd recommend that you think about going to Exchange Enterprise - that's a mighty big store sitting on that server. If you can't get bigger disks at today's prices, I'd say you need to inform mgt that they need to ensure resiliency in the case of hardware failure.

 

[58sniper]

I agree with Zelandakh. That's a good sized store. Enterprise is certainly worth the look, but so is a bigger RAID array. Add another array, and put the databases there, and use the existing array for the transaction logs.

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Want to know how email works? Read for yourself -

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt