Why doesn't the priv edb & stm reduce in size when there is a substantial reducation in the mailbox size. edb size is 33gig and stm size is 21gig. Example I have 176 mailboxes around 90 are userbase mailboxes the rest are sotobase mailboxes and dont have much storage on them. I I manage to get the user base mailboxes down in size and ask the userbase to start archiving there older emails. I of course helped. Isn't by doing that susposed to reduce priv space. I aswell as started to archive to ***.pst files, older email accounts that are disabled in AD. Any insight on this would be aperciated.

The online defrag only marks space as free but doesn't actual COMPACT the database. You need to do an offline defrag for that. As new mail and accounts are created they will use the existing white space before growing. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/328804Mark Morowczynski|MCT| MCSE 2003:Messaging, Security|MCITP:EMA 2K7,EDA Win 7,ES,SA,EA|MCTS:Windows Mobile Admin|Security+|http://almostdailytech.com

As Mark suggested, take an offline backup of your database files then perform and offline defragmentation. http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Defragmenting-Exchange-Database.htmlMVP Exchange Server

Since Exchange performs a daily online defrag, an offline defrag is not necessary under normal circumstances, so read up on when its recommended to perform an offline defrag. See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa997972.aspx. Your case might warrant an offline defrag, but it might not, so do some research before you do that. Don't be so quick to "pull the trigger." Anytime that you dismount your database and do something to it, you risk running into issues. Even though the offline defrag essentially makes a copy of the existing database, you never know what can happen. Plus, the defrag would require a few hours of Exchange downtime.MCSA: M

When u delete any mail etc from the mailbox it is marked for deletion but not really deleted. After that when online defrag runs daily it checks/compares the age of the deleted mail to the retention period specified on the database. The moment when the the age of the deleted item crosses the retention period it is permanently delted by the online maintenance and you run the offline defrag of the database you can expect to get back that space. Hope this helps. ------Exchange, OCS------

Thank you all for your input and help