Hi I have a Exchange 2003 SP2 and was wondering if the DB is fragmented or not to proceed with the defragmentation

I never recommend performing an offline defrag of an Exch database. The quickest and safest way to reclaim space is to create a new mailbox database and move the user's mailboxes to the new database. Once complete, you can delete the original database and the new database will be as clean as it can be at that moment in time. Tim Harrington - Catapult Systems - http://HowDoUC.blogspot.com

Exchange maintenance performs an online defrag of the database every night during maintenance already - so you are covered. :) http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996226(EXCHG.65).aspx Exchange Store Maintenance

Thank you both but as I can see if now is too fragmented?

Events 1221 will tell you hom much free space is in the database: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/186291

Event Type: Information Event Source: MSExchangeIS Mailbox Store Event Category: General Event ID: 1221 Date: 18/12/2010 Time: 7:00:00 Username: Not available Computer: SRVEXCHANGE Description: The database "First Storage Group \ Mailbox Store (SRVEXCHANGE) " has 2592 megabytes of free space after online defragmentation is complete. Advise me to defrag? Thanks

2592 megabytes is 2GB+, so no. That's hardly anything and will be easily recovered. I wouldnt do an offline defrag for really any reason regardless.

Hi, Deleted pages are marked freed for usage during the online maintenance of the database. Any deleted pages will be used for new data at first. It will always try to use existing deleted pages before actually growing the size of the database file. 2592 megabytes means there are 2GB+ deleted pages are marked for free. In most situation, you will not need to perform an offline defrag unless the lower harddisk space affects the Exchange performance, you need to release the space immediately. Thanks AllenAllen Song

Hi, Use eseutil /d /p "c:\program files\exchsrvr\mdbdata\mailbox store.edb" if Tempdfg.edb and Tempdfg.stm are the defragmented files that you created by running the /d /p option, you must rename them to Priv1.edb and Priv1.stm respectively if Priv1.edb and Priv1.stm are the databases that you originally ran Eseutil against. If you don't have space on same drive you can use /t switch with Eseutil below the example: eseutil /d /p "c:\program files\exchsrvr\mdbdata\mailbox store.edb" /t"d:\tempdfg.edb" Note If you do not use the /t option, the Tempdfgxxxx.edb file and the Tempdfgxxxx.stm file are created in the location that you run Eseutil from. In the previous file names, xxxx is a random number. For details :http://support.microsoft.com/kb/328804Dinesh S.