Recently I had the joy of an oversize (16GB) exchange database that would not mount, I needed to do a emergency defrag of it and hes what I did.
1. First shutdown Exchange completely, including the information store service, to ensure we get a clean shutdown.
2. Now copy the files priv1.edb and priv1.stm files to another location as to defrag a database you will need 110% of the size of the database in free disk space.
Therefore moving to another drive is normally a good way of doing this, if the drive is on a computer without exchange follow these instrcutions from Microsoft “How to run Eseutil on a computer without Exchange Server” at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/244525/en-us
3. In this example ive copied the files to c:\edb and created within that another folder called “backup” with the path c:\edb\backup.
4. First run a integrity check of the database using the command below and if its ok, you can carry on.
eseutil /k "c:\edb\priv1.edb"See this link for more information: http://www.petri.co.il/check_exchange_2000_2003_server_databases_integrity.htm
5. Now you can perform the defrag, in my example I wanted to preserve the copies I made so I have at least one copy at all times of a working database that I can go back to if it all goes wrong, i used this command:
eseutil /d c:\edb\priv1.edb /p /t c:\edb\backup\temp.edb /f c:\edb\backup\temp.stmSee this link for more information: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=192185
6. After it finishes delete your orignals in “c:\program files\exchsrvr\mdbdata\priv1.edb” and “c:\program files\exchsrvr\mdbdata\priv1.stm”.
7. Copy the two temp files which are the defragmented databases from “c:\edb\backup\temp.edb” and “c:\edb\backup\temp.stm” to “c:\program files\exchsrvr\mdbdata\temp.edb” and “c:\program files\exchsrvr\mdbdata\temp.edb” respecitvely.
8. Rename them so they have the following names: “c:\program files\exchsrvr\mdbdata\priv1.edb” and “c:\program files\exchsrvr\mdbdata\priv1.stm”
9. Remount your defraged database.
