How do I make sure that what I've backedup so far is going to help me. how to I restore the Exchange backup without messing around the existing Exchasnge2007. I'm running Exchange 2007 SP1 and backup is done using Symantec. thanks

First and foremost, this sounds like you need some D/R practice. Practicing on a production system, of course, is never recommended. Can you first build yourself a lab using your Symantec software? Set up the lab, then perform some test backups and restores to make sure that you understand the procedures. Next, on your production system, review your Symantec and Windows Application logs to verify that the backups are completing successfully. This is a good step towards verifying that the backups are actually good. It is a best practice to verify your backups completed successfully every day. Once you are confident that you know how to use your Symantec software, to ensure that your backups can be restored, you can restore the data to a recovery storage group. Below is a good article from Henrik Walther on using the RSG. You can restore to your production server, but not overwrite the production database. http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Working-Recovery-Storage-Groups-Exchange-2007.html If you have never done a restore to an RSG, I would practice this first on in your lab environment before trying it on the production system, though.Jim McBee - Blog - http://mostlyexchange.blogspot.com