Welcome to the wonderful world of white space. Even though you archived all the data out of the store, what you wind up with is 1GB of "real" data and 53GB of "empty" data that could be recovered through an offline defrag. You could also (depending on your configuration) have some stuff left in the dumpster that is also taking up space, which would become white space once you reach your retention time limits. So basically, you are seeing exactly what should be expected given the operation you have outlined. Now, having said all that - I have to ask, can you outline why you decided to move all the email to PSTs? Every client I have is more interested in eliminating PSTs than exploring them as the long-term solution to a problem. The things you lose - centralized backup, dumpster and data recoverability, centralized management, enforceable policies, etcetera, etcetera - by doing so seem to outweigh any positive of doing so. What driver would push you to such a decision? Rick -----Original Message----- From: A. Michael Salim [mailto:msalim@xxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Sunday, May 15, 2005 2:28 PM To: [ExchangeList] Subject: [exchangelist] Exchange 2003 store size mystery http://www.MSExchange.org/ Hi all, I have a mystery about the size of my mailbox store. I have an Exchange 2003 Enterprise server with a store size of about 45GB (the .EDB file is 45GB in size). The mystery is that this is nowhere near what the size whould be. The store should be no more than 1-2GB in size. Everything else seems to be fine i.e. the server is receiving and sendimg emails fine, OWA is fine, RPC/HTTP is fine, OMA is fine, performance seems fine, no complaints from users. However there is some background to the story: This time last week the store was indeed about 54GB in size. Then it was decided that all users' mailboxes would be saved to local PST files and cleared and everyone will start with a "zero size" mailbox effective Friday (for unrelated and valid reasons). So on Friday I did a complete backup, then ran Exmerge in "Archive" mode so that all mailboxes would be saved to PST files and cleared from the maikbox store. The Exmerge seems to have gone normally as far as I can tell (all 115 mailboxes succeeded etc.) and the individual mailboxes did indeed get cleared out as expected, and each mailbox got saved as expected in a PST file with the old data. But the mailbox store (.EDB file) size was still 54GB. When viewed in ESM (Exchange System Manager 2003) the mailboxe sizes are all tiny an do not add up to even 1GB. I noticed this discrepency so I ran eseutil etc. on it defrag the store (after dismounting the store of course). The defrag ran just fine, no errors. I remounted the mailbox store. Everything is still running smoothly. I dismounted and ran "isinteg -fix -test alltests" and that ran fine too, zero errors/fixes/warnings for all 20 tests first time around. And everything is still running just fine and dandy after remount. Except that the store EDB file is 45GB in size (it shrank from 54GB to 45GB but it should have shrunk to maybe 1Gb or 2GB). Any clues or suggestions? I do need to get the EDB file size down to the correct size of 2GB or less. Best regards Mike ------------------------------------------------------ List Archives: http://www.webelists.com/cgi/lyris.pl?enter=exchangelist Exchange Newsletters: http://www.msexchange.org/pages/newsletter.asp Exchange FAQ: http://www.msexchange.org/pages/larticle.asp?type=FAQ ------------------------------------------------------ Other Internet Software Marketing Sites: World of Windows Networking: http://www.windowsnetworking.com Leading Network Software Directory: http://www.serverfiles.com No.1 ISA Server Resource Site: http://www.isaserver.org Windows Security Resource Site: http://www.windowsecurity.com/ Network Security Library: http://www.secinf.net/ Windows 2000/NT Fax Solutions: http://www.ntfaxfaq.com ------------------------------------------------------ You are currently subscribed to this MSEXchange.org Discussion List as: rickb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe visit http://www.webelists.com/cgi/lyris.pl?enter=exchangelist Report abuse to listadmin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx