Mailbox sizes won't get smaller

[life036]

Hello,

I recently had an issue where I exceeded the max size of the Exchange 2003 database. I expanded the maximum database size by following an MS technet article as an immediate fix, but now I'm on to slimming down the database size.

I deleted a whole bunch of large emails from user's mailboxes, and about 80,000 emails and NDRs from the admin account (don't ask). The thing is, the database size doesn't seem to be going down, even though these large emails are no longer in any of the accounts...

In the Exchange System Manager, I am looking at Servers>My Server>First Storage Group>Mailbox Store>Mailboxes . I'm refreshing this list after deleting large items out of user's mailboxes, but the user mailbox size in this list NEVER goes down! What the deally?

Thanks!

 

[paella33]

You would need to do an offline defrag of the database.

 

[Spirit]

Another thing to consider is the deleted items retention period.

This may be X days or until a backup is done. You may want to tweak this to 0.

Iain

 

[58sniper]

It's not the physical size of the files that you need to concern yourself with - it's the amount of data in them.

Take the cumulative total of the .edb and .stm files, and subtract the amount mentioned in the event 1221 log entries. That's the amount of data you have.

I'm assuming that you have SP2 installed, and you've reached the 75GB limit?

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP