My customer is running Exchange 2007 and inadvertantly deleted a user account. They asked if I could recover the mailbox. I looked at the Disconnected Mailbox arean under the Recipient Configuration but do not see the mailbox. Is the mailbox automatically deleted when the user account is deleted? They used NT backup to backup the mailboxes and I was going to try to recover the mailbox from NTBackup but I'm not sure if I can restore the database to an alternate location. It does not appear that we can restore individual mailboxes. Can someone point me to documentation on using NTBackup to restore the mailbox? Thanks. Jim

Hi Jim, Unless they've changed the setting the mailbox should still be in the database for 30 days. Try running Clean-MailboxDatabase http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124076.aspxto look in AD for mailboxes that are disconnected but haven't been marked as disconnected (seems to the Exchange 2007's equivalent of 2003's "Cleanup Agent"). If you need to perform a restore because the mailbox retention period has passed then have a look at Recovery Storage groups: http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Working-Recovery-Storage-Groups-Exchange-2007.html. Just a heads up if the mailbox has been purged and you are going down the RSG route. In 2003 I had a problem where the mailbox I was trying to recover using RSG's had been purged and I couldn't get the mailbox back. Something to do with the RSG's only making mailboxes available for restore that still exist in the original database. This site has done a good job of explaining the problem and a fix in detail: http://telnetport25.wordpress.com/2007/08/09/using-recovery-storage-groups-where-the-primary-mailbox-has-been-purged-from-the-store/. Whether this a problem in 2007, I don't know. I hope this helps, Mark

Mark, Thanks for the information. I can do everything as outlined for the RSG except restore the mailbox. Could that be because the user AD account was deleted and the GUIDs do not match. I was able to restore a mailbox of an account that had been disabled. If I could export the mailbox in the RSG to a .pst format then I could bring that into the new mailbox. Suggestions? Thanks. Jim

Hi Jim, I am sorry to say that it is not possible to restore the content from RSG to .pst file with Export-Mailbox command. But to satisfy your requirement you can restore a mailbox from Recovery Storage Group to alternate mailbox with below command. Restore-Mailbox -Identity Scott -RSGDatabase MyRSGDatabase -RSGMailbox John -TargetFolder Recovery This command will recover data from Johns mailbox to the folder name "Recovery" in new mailbox of Scott. References: Working with Recovery Storage Groups in Exchange 2007 http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Working-Recovery-Storage-Groups-Exchange-2007.html Restore-Mailbox http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb125218(EXCHG.80).aspx

does this example show the mailbox being restore to another mailbox within the Recovery Storage Group? I have an article Using exMerge with Exchange 2007 but have not been able to start that at this time. I'd rather use the restore-mailbox command if I can restore to a folder in a new mailbox within the First Storage Unit.

Hi, Yes, it does restore the dead mailbox (John) to a folder of new mailbox which is available on your first storage group (Scott).