Recover disk space from clearing mailboxes 2

[Speculum]

Received an alert on disk space running out (drive dedicated to Exchange), so deleted some ancient logs (.log files in mdbdata folder) and also found a command line use of eseutil.exe could be used to defrag the edb files.

Having had users go through and archive or delete old emails from their mailboxes, I'd really like to recover that space on the disk ... any ideas how it can be reclaimed anyone please?

 

[ntinlin]

First thing to do is check for 1221 events in event log to see if you have any white space after your deleted items retention time has run out and maintenance has run.

IF and ONLY IF you have many Gb's free after this which you doubt your users will refill then you might consider doing an offline defrag using ESEUTIL. However you will need 110% of the size of the EDB and STM files and might have to use a mapped drive somewhere else on the network as temporary storage while it is working.
Can take a while as to work as well. Very dependent on speed of local disks and network if used.

Also look at using Mailbox Manager to regularly and automatically purge users old e-mails, deleted items etc. etc.

White space in itself is not a bad thing by the way because it gives your databases room to grow without using up any more disk space.
In other words even if you have tons of white space and have no pressing need to recover the disk space or increase backup speed just leave it be but keep an eye on the 1221 events.

Neill

 

[Speculum]

Many thanks for that: there are quite a lot of 1221 events started coming up recently.

I ran offline defrag for an hour last night which got up to approx 8% done, and report after said 7MB free disk space. Understand white space good as room for expansion, so reckon might be good idea to run defrag on priv1.edb and pub1.edb (17GB & 28Mb respectively!) Now have the extra 10% to run on that drive.

Thanks again for quick response!

 

[58sniper]

Common thinking is that you shouldn't defrag unless you've got more than 30% of your file size in whitespace, and you're unlikely to expand to that.

Exchange uses existing whitespace more efficiently than when it has to expand the file size. So it's generally a good idea not to do anything with it. Plus, a defrag requires downtime. Who wants that, right?

Pat Richard
Microsoft Exchange MVP

 

[Speculum]

Yup, now disk space ok it's running ok, will note the "common thinking" and apply!