Removing a mailbox 1

[Jayee]

Hi,

A user who's recently left the company had a huge mailbox which I have archived off the server into a PST and imported it into his Team Leader's Outlook so she can retrieve any items she needs. This has all gone fine.

Where I'm struggling is in freeing up the nearly 1.0GB of space which was (according to Exchange Manager) being used by his mailbox. I deleted it this way:

In SBS Administrator's console, I deleted his mailbox, but it still appears in Exchange Manager). I've been told that it doesn't actually get deleted until the maintenance occurs the following morning.

The morning morning, I hoped to see the account no longer in Exchange Manager and see the extra space, but it's still in Exchange Manager with a Red cross against it and an option to Purge. I have taken the Purge option. But again I see no extra space on my server.

This morning, I thought that surely the account must be gone and the extra space available. However, although the mailbox has finally gone from Exchange Manager, I still have the same amount of disk space.

I really could use the extra 1.0GB of space for other files when the users return from the X-Mas break.

Could you advise - how much longer do I have to wait before I actually going to see a disk space benefit from removing this user's mailbox ? Is there something else I need to do ?

Thanks for your help.

Regards,
Jay/UK

 

[Zelandakh]

Jay. Apart from needing to join TTUK (shameless plug) forum on this site as you are based in the UK...

You followed exactly what you are supposed to do. The 1GB of space will appear INSIDE the store (priv*.*) on Exchange. This will be seen in the event log as app log type 1221 event. The Exchange store is deliberately set to NEVER shrink. It will only grow when it has no space internally.

If you had a 10GB store and deleted 8GB of data then I would recommend compacting the store. But 1GB isn't worth it. It means taking Exchange offline and a great deal of finger crossing.

 

[Jayee]

Hi,

That's disappointing, but I can see why Exchange works the way it does.

Sounds like I need to find out how big our Exchange store is and how much (in total) of it is currently being used by the Mailboxes and by our Public Folders.

Can you help me with this ?

Regards,
Jay

 

[Zelandakh]

Add priv.edb plus priv.stm. That's your store size.
Same for pub.* for the public store.

Go to ESM and look at the mailboxes. Click on the size column to sort by size. That'll show you where the size is located.

 

[Jayee]

Hi,

Thanks.

Regarding finding out how much of the store is currently being used, though, I want to know the TOTAL size currently in use for the mailboxes/public folders, so I can see how much is free at this moment in time.

Regards,
Jay

 

[strongm]

As Zel mentioned, Event 1221 tells you how much 'free' (white) space there is in your store.

(Subtract this from your store's size, and you have how much space is in use. Because of single instance storage, this is often a more accurate figure than that obtained from adding up individual mailbox and public folder sizes)