Ran Eseutil - but didn't recoup space - ?

[CWBarton]

I've just read multiple posts concerning the 16GB limitation, eseutil, necessary drive space and the like - but didn't see this particular problem addressed.

My Priv.edb just hit 15.2GB's (running NT40 - Exchange 5.5 Standard Edition) - Over the past 18 months I have ran eseutil several times (after cleaning up mailboxes) and been able get the Priv down to around 12GB each time.

This go round I know that I deleted over 4 GB's of garbage email (deleted items, sent items, moved some to .pst files, etc). But when I ran eseutil /d I only gained about 500 MB's (yes megabytes). (The Priv dropped from 15.2 to 14.8GB's)

I then set my deleted retention time to 0 - and cleaned up another 2GB's worth of mailboxes and ran the eseutil again - same results - only gained about 100MB's.

Any ideas why the Priv didn't shrink more than that?

Thanks in advanced for any assistance.

Craig.

 

[Zelandakh]

Backup the database and flush the log files.
Have the users go through and delete unwanted emails.
Get them to empty their bins.
After online defrag check the event log for space available. It doesn't always tally perfectly!
eseutil /d should gain back most of that figure.

Deleting 2GB of emails doesn't necessarily mean you can cut priv.edb by 2GB.

 

[Jutlak]

there are two things you can check.
1. check for event ID 1022 (I think) - it will tell you how much white space the server can recover - this should be after the online defrags messages in the app log.

2. Open exchaneg admin, goto the mailbox resources for that server under IS and highlight all mailboxes and click file and save contents.

Open this file in excel and total the mailboxes sizes. This will give you the exact size of the priv. This is what gives you the correct size of the IS.

 

[WillyBubba]

More than likely, the reason why this is happening is due to the way Exchange stores messages. Exchange uses a "single-instance message store" model, which means that if a message is sent to 100 users, there is only one copy of the message on the server, with a link to the inboxes of all 100 users. If multiple servers are involved, then one copy of the message is stored on each server.

If all of the users delete the message, then the message is removed from the central store. If even a single user saves the message to a folder or keeps it in their inbox (or doesn't empty their Deleted Items), then the message remains on the server. So, even if you go and clean out "4GB" worth of messages from various mailboxes, that doesn't mean that you have actually removed all of those messages because other users may have those messages saved. Ditto if you're deleting entire mailboxes.

At this point, your only options (that I can think of) are:
1. - Use the Mailbox Cleanup Agent to automatically delete content from all mailboxes using whatever rules you think are appropriate and then run eseutil again. This option, by the way, is one of the quickest and easiest ways to piss off everyone in the Exchange Organization.
2. - Have users archive old messages in PSTs and then run eseutil again.
3. - Set mailbox size limitations and have users move the rest of their data into PSTs and run eseutil again.
3. - Upgrade your version of Exchange.