Hi all, I have an issue with one of my customers. The IT person there enable the maintenance schedule in which it deleted any emails that is 60 days old. Now the users are requesting to recover those emails. The exchange db has not been backed up for over a year so it has lots of log files but no good backup of the database. Can I use the mailbox db and replay the log files up to the day before he turn on the maintenance schedule so we can recover those purge emails? Thanks

What's the RetainDeletedItemsUntilBackup setting set to on the mailboxes?[string](0..33|%{[char][int](46+("686552495351636652556262185355647068516270555358646562655775 0645570").substring(($_*2),2))})-replace " "

There is a hard way ... Create a DR server , copy the log files only you may need to assume ( check the date on log files ) the timing before the deletion. Try to mount the DB . Exchange will create a new DB and SHOULD ( Replay the log files ) after the last file it will error out as the last file is not present. ( There shoudl not be a DB file when installing Exchange DR server) You can repair the db and copy /export mails into pst.. either way , copy the DB and log files on a seperate system for DR .

Kook, is correct, however, this will only work if you have ALL logs files from the very inception of the original database. If so then as he stated you would need to pick a date you think the emails MIGHT exist and then only include logs up to that date. If you don't find the data then start the process over again and move the date of the logs forward or backward and repeat until you find what you need. Troy Werelius www.Lucid8.com

Khoj, is correct, however, this will only work if you have ALL logs files from the very inception of the original database. If so then as he stated you would need to pick a date you think the emails MIGHT exist and then only include logs up to that date. If you don't find the data then start the process over again and move the date of the logs forward or backward and repeat until you find what you need. Troy Werelius www.Lucid8.com

Thank you. We are creating our virtual environment and will try this. will update everyone on status by end of week. Frank

As far as I know the method of Khoj doesn't work anymore starting exchange 2007 Full time IT consultant since 1998 mainly on Exchange\ISA\AD MCSE NT4.0,2000/2003, CCNA MCITP: Enterprise Messaging Administrator 2007/2010 MCT since 2001

Hi, You cannot do that without the original database which not run the maintenance. Thanks AllenAllen Song