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Private edb store size does not change

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lizdunn

IS-IT--Management
Jul 12, 2000
42
US
The size of our private edb store does not change even after deleting items from inboxes. We are running out of harddrive space on our exchange server so have been cleaning out mailboxes, but the size of the database has not decreased. The last modified date is 3/22/04. Are items retained in the db for a certain period?
 
no, it grows to hold the data but does not shrink until you do an offline defrag.

Check event log for 1221 events which will tell you how much free space you have. You need 110% of the priv.edb spare on disk. If you don't have it, mount another server to a mapped network drive, change to that drive and run

c:\exchsrvr\bin\eseutil.exe /t v:\temp

but check the command line switches carefully.

It will take a long time - it hasnt crashed! Search this forum for defrag and eseutil /d as this has been covered a lot.
 
you can check to see how much space is being occupied by retained items by looking at the priv info store mailbox resources and adding the deleted item K column. to change the number of days go to the private information store properties, it's on the general tab. When the Priv Info store does it's online defrag it cleans out old deleted items. This is different than the DS and Pub info store properties. There is a registry key that you have to change somewhere to make the frequency of that defrag change. here is the KB article on that:
 
Add drive space; it's cheap and much less risky then trying to reduce your PRIV.EDB size. Trust me.
 
There are several things to check, depending on your configuration.

Deleted items aren't always purged right away. Also, they can be configured to stay until you get a good backup.

Like Zelandakh says, Event 1221 will tell you how much empty space you have in Priv.edb. That is roughly how much space you'll gain on an offline defrag.

There is also an event fired daily after cleaning up deleted items (event 1207). It compares how much deleted items are eligible for cleaning up, and how much was left after cleaning. If you notice that the before/after numbers are identical, check that your backups are working.

If you have to do an offline defrag, it will take up to several hours. There is a way to do it on another server. If you choose that, there is a MS article on how to actually have the other server actually run the defrag. That will be faster if you have a spare server. The speed of the drives is a big factor in how fast it goes. On a slow server it took 4 hours for a 12 Gb database. Ona fast server it took less than one hour.

Read a lot before you do an offline defrag. It's easy to screw it up and potentially lose all your mail. Good luck!

Dan
 
Just make sure that the size of the edb file does not exceed 16 GB (unless you are running Enterprise version).

 
I would simply buy additional drive space - it is easy, cheap and less problematical than trying to reduce the size of the database
 
674767 (IS/IT--Manageme) Apr 19, 2004
I would simply buy additional drive space - it is easy, cheap and less problematical than trying to reduce the size of the database

Not an answer if you are using the Standard version.

-------------------------------

If it doesn't leak oil it must be empty!!
 
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