Hey everone, We are running Exchange 2003 standard and the priv1.edb database is at 10.5 GB and the priv1.stm is at 6.4 GB and the server only has roughly 2 GB of free space remaining out of a total of 24GB. One user cleaned out over 2 GB of space from their inbox last week, but the database size remained the same. Maybe someone can explain why this database did not reduce in size after emails were deleted or how some of this free space can be reclaimed? Thanks

Have a look here: http://www.msexchange.org/articles/Exchange-Databases-Disk-Consumption.htmlWith kind regards Krystian Zieja http://www.projectnenvision.com Follow me on twitter My Blog

That is by design. The Exchange database never shrinks. The space will be reclaimed as white space and used by Exchange for new content. However in my experience the content that was deleted will be content from one database but most new content will be from the other database. I wrote this background to the Exchange database which will explain more. http://exchange.sembee.info/2003/mailbox/database.asp You will need more disk space - putting it off is only going to cause you problems. Storage is cheap - my home Exchange server database is bigger than yours! Simon. Simon Butler, Exchange MVP Blog | Exchange Resources | In the UK? Hire Me.

Thank you. Your article helps quite a bit. The database is dynamic, it will keep growing for the space it needs and when data is deleted it retains the same size with extra white space.