I was running out of space on my exchange server and I noticed that when I deleted a mailbox I did not reclaim that space. So after doing a little research I found that basically you can delete a mailbox but it does not really shrink the size of the database. Running the maint schedule does not help it merely cleans up that database and turns any deleted mailbox into whitespace on the database. So what to do? I could run the ESEUTIL but I did not have free space on the drive to run this utility not to mention that this would result in down time while the ESEUTIL is being run. I've also heard that this utility takes a long time to run! So my plan of action was to add additional storage space and then move all of the mailboxes over to the new database in the new information store. I have completed this and now I basically have a database on my first information store that is 146 GB and the eventid 1221 reads that I have 142 GB of free space for this mailbox database. I feel that I am ready to delete this database but wanted to be sure that since it is the FIRST database in the FIRST Information store that I would not be deleting off any hidden/important information that might reside in this database. So here are my questions 1) Is there a way to check for any hidden information on this database? 2) The public database is on this information store (different database) will this be a problem? (I am guessing NO) 3) Will deleting the database get me the space back or will I have to delete the entire information store? 4) Should I dismount the database from the Management Console before deleting it? (Going with Yes here....) 5) After I dismount the database is it as simple as selecting "Remove" from the console to delete the database? 6) After I remove the database is there anything I should check? Thanks in advance for any and all replies

Hi KMcHale Did you try above solution? Cheers Zi Feng TechNet Community Support