Andy Fearless 
United Kingdom
Member since
4/1/2005
Platinum Membership
Posts: 136
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| 1/04/2006 08:21 PM |
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You can have this one for free 
You may have heard that, post-SP2, Exchange 2003 has had its' size limit raised from the old 16Gb up to 75Gb. This isn't strictly true; it actually raises it to 18Gb, but it can be further raised manually to any size up to 75Gb.
It raises it to 18Gb in case you have hit 16Gb, the store has dismounted, and you have been unable to mount the store to delete mail to get it down in size.
Anyway, i was lucky enough today to have a Microsoft Exchange 2003 Specialist Telephone Geezer talk me though changing the size of the Information Store, and here it is:
- Install Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2. This is essential!
- Launch regedit
- Navigate to HKLM/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/MSExchangeIS/<yourservername>
- Under the server name there will be two folders, one called 'private', the other 'public'. Both names are followed by a long string of alphanumerics.
- Highlight the private one.
- Right-click it and choose NEW -> DWORD VALUE
- Call it 'Database Size Limit in Gb' without the quotes. This is case sensitive and you must get it absolutely spot on or it will not work.
- Double-click this new value, change the type to 'decimal' and give it any number up to 75. This is the size in Gb that you want it to be.
- Repeat steps 6 to 8 for the public entry.
- Restart the Exchange Information Store Service.
- Voila!
I intend to be quite careful with this; the idea of having to disaster recovery, or even offline degrament, a 60Gb Information Store fills me with dread. But at the same time i have one client who are massive email users (lots of attachments) and there are 20 very busy people in the company; 16Gb is simply not enough.
Use wisely!
Andy
p.s. Admin types - sticky this?
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Mariette Knap 
The Netherlands
Member since
3/24/2005
Forum Admins
Posts: 12970
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Andy Fearless
United Kingdom
Member since
4/1/2005
Platinum Membership
Posts: 136
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| 1/05/2006 07:04 PM |
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Thanks are all very nice, but some help with my GPO predicament would be marvelous
Thanking you in advance, oh wise one 
Five minute job for you i reckon  |
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titanic panic
United States
Member since
10/12/2006
Registered Users
Posts: 2
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| 10/12/2006 01:43 AM |
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| just wanted to say this helped me out, thanks |
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Eric Pearia
United States
Member since
10/26/2006
Registered Users
Posts: 223
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| 11/14/2006 11:02 PM |
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Thanks, this guilde got me going.
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andrew wang
United States
Member since
5/10/2005
Registered Users
Posts: 19
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| 5/16/2007 06:54 AM |
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I also just had this problem. We are trying to apply some policies to archive user emails to their local drives, plus add basic housekeeping like emptying the deleted folder.
We have 3 users that receive lots of attachments, sometimes in duplicate or triplicate to each user. When sent to all 3, plus a journal account, there are 6 copies stored in the mail store. I'm considering creating a new account specific to some of these "report" emails and creating a rule to move these mails to a public folder.
Sound like good ideas? Please post if you have any suggestions. Thanks. |
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Stewart Brown
United States
Member since
8/22/2005
Platinum Membership
Posts: 620
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| 8/14/2007 04:10 AM |
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thanks, this post was in the nick of time - I just started to get messages about being 19GB.
also, what do you mean by "offline defragment"? one of the ways i discovered my problem was because my d; drive with exchange on it has not been able to defragment. It keeps getting stuck at moving files at 3% on a file named "priv1.edb".
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Eric Pearia
United States
Member since
10/26/2006
Registered Users
Posts: 223
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| 8/14/2007 03:10 PM |
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| Your priv1.edb file is where all your information for your exchange is stored. You have to defrag it using a dos prompt and command, search the forms for directions on how to do so. |
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Stewart Brown
United States
Member since
8/22/2005
Platinum Membership
Posts: 620
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| 8/14/2007 03:46 PM |
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OK, I have seen the article here about offline defragging of the exchange stores. I understand that. But then if you have to offline defrag the stores, how do you degrag the entire drive? When I try to degrag the drive it gets stuck on the Exchange store. Or should the utility be bypassing that part?
Perhaps I should have separated Exchange out to it's own partition? Is that the secret? I don't see how to exclude the Exchange stores from being defragged using the built-in SBS degragging utility in computer management. |
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Eric Pearia
United States
Member since
10/26/2006
Registered Users
Posts: 223
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| 8/14/2007 05:38 PM |
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What I would suggest, and maybe this isn't the solution, but try dismounting the store, then run the defrag on the drive volume. Then remount the store.
Obvisouly doing so at a time where server usage is minimal, late at night or on the weekend. Also, make a back up of the information store before you do it.
I would think the problem your running into is the file is not movable while it's mounted.
Again, I'm just guessing. I actually haven't defraged the volume my information store is on yet. Though I probably will try soon. |
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rajesh reddy
India
Member since
8/30/2007
Registered Users
Posts: 1
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| 8/30/2007 05:04 AM |
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| I am new to Exchange server , If we defrag our .edb file what is the use of that?pls .............. |
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Eric Pearia
United States
Member since
10/26/2006
Registered Users
Posts: 223
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| 8/31/2007 06:19 PM |
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Your EDB file grows and grows, and as emails are deleted, and mail boxes/public folders/calendar items are moved, created, deleted the file keep growing.
Defraging it re-organizes it, and also frees up room to shrink it in size.
I basically use it to make the EDB file smaller. |
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Stewart Brown
United States
Member since
8/22/2005
Platinum Membership
Posts: 620
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| 9/05/2007 05:51 AM |
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can you unmount your store, copy it to another drive, then use the dos command utility to defrag that, then copy it back over and remount it? would that work?
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Eric Pearia
United States
Member since
10/26/2006
Registered Users
Posts: 223
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| 9/05/2007 07:43 PM |
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Yes, you could do that, it would be just as easy to defrag it on the drive you're working off, or there is another command to defrag to a different location. You could also go that method.
But yours would work, just would be slower. And always back it up before you attempt to defrag it. |
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