I currently have Exchange 2007 Std (virtual) installed on a 320GB drive. The Mailbox Database is now 279GB as we are journaling our mail into another mailbox (called Journal, which is around 110GB) for auditing purposes. I've now created a new db on another drive and moved the Journal Mailbox across to this to free up space on my main disc. The overnight maintenance schedule has run and freed up 90gb within the database, but it hasn't released the drive space. I need to free the space up on this main drive for the replication queue (DoubleTake) and for the log files. Having done some reading on the internet I've found that I can use Esutil /d to reclaim the space. I need to run this with the /t switch (as I don't have enough space free on the main drive) to use another drive for the temp database but I'm not sure of how much space I require. In moving the db I found I needed 2.5x the size of the db, is this going to apply for the temporary db used for reclaiming the space as well? Thanks in advance. Andrew.

First offline maintenance will not shrink your DB , it will just create white pages which will be filled up first before any size expansion happens, Eseutil /d requires 110% of the space fo the DB. Even if you running eseutil with/T , it will require 110% of the size on another drive. Again as your DB is big it will take a while running Eseutil /d and your store would be dismounted. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998863(EXCHG.80).aspx

One good option is to use the defragmentation on another machine if you plan it well. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;244525

I would create new stores and move mailboxes rather than run an offline defrag. No downtime. After you empty out the first store, you can defrag that if you want. :)

+1 On Andy's reply.Steve Goodman Check out my Blog for more Exchange info or find me on Twitter

I would, Agree with Andy. An offline defrag of a 300GB store is going to require a lot of downtime. It's much less painful to simply create a new store and move the mailboxes.

Thank you all for the replies. What I've decided to do is cap with database at 280gb and move the log files and DoubleTake replication queue to another disk where I have space. And to then allow the whitespace within the mailbox db to fill up, once it starts to get close to being full I'll create another db on a new drive and move my larger mailboxes to that. Regards, Andrew.