No. You won't be able to get to the mail data if the store is off-line. A good way to do what you want to do is to connect to the store with the mail client, create a PST, and copy the folders into it. Don't do anything via the M: drive if you can help it. Once you have it in a PST, you can then munge the server, create the new one, and upload the folder contents into the new mailbox. Works fine for a few mails. Al -----Original Message----- From: Zentarra, Marco [mailto:marco.zentarra@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Friday, October 24, 2003 4:10 AM To: [ExchangeList] Subject: [exchangelist] Please Help! Old mails recovery! http://www.MSExchange.org/ Hey all! situation: exchange 2000 in a 2000 domain we´ve got an backup from our exchange from 24.09.2003, there is a mailbox from which we need some mails. so far so good, there are a couple of options we´ve got to get them back in our "live-database" from today. i have an idea how we can get them very fast, easily and SAVELY: on a exchangeserver, theres is the mapped drive M: In that drive you can find all the mailboxes, right? when you copy, i.e. a mail from folder m:\bla\user.exchange\inbox to m:\bla\anotheruser.exchange\inbox the second user see this mail in realtime. this works fine! now we get back to our backup: my idea is to set up a new exchangeserver, put the backup-mailsorage in it, access the m: drive from the new exchangeserver, (EVERYTHING OFFLINE, otherwise we will get big problems, thats for shure) copy the mails out of drive m: , delete the exchange and its services, the connect to the LAN and copy all the mails (we are talking about 20 mails) in our "live-exchangestorage" with using my "M: - drive - idea" and thats it! and here is my question: do we have to set up the new exchangeserver to make this possible, or can we just map a drive M: on a server where is NO EXCHANGE installed (the we´ve got not the problem taht everything got to happen offline) to access the old *.edb files as i wrote some lines above? if this is possible, a can go home early today :-) TIA Mit freundlichen Grüßen Marco Zentarra Systemadministrator ONLine GmbH Unna - München - Dresden Heinrich-Hertz-Str. 4 D-59423 Unna Fon 02303 - 98601-305 Fax 02303 - 98601-601 eMail marco.zentarra@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Web http://www.communication-companies.de ------------------------------------------------------ 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: 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 ------------------------------------------------------