Recover Emails From Unmountable Exchange 2016/2013 Database
Sometimes a situation occurs where administrators look for a solution to Recover emails from unmountable Exchange 2016, 2013 database. This post is going to discuss user’s problem regarding the same and demonstrate a solution over it.
Exchange User’s Problem
It will be easy to understand the problem by understanding a user query who had suffered the issue. You can go through the following query to recover emails from unmountable Exchange Server so as to know about the actual issue over which we are going to provide the solution in the next section:
“I am new to Microsoft Exchange 2016 and want to get advice from you guys to resolve a problem. Actually, we are having Exchange 2016 with five databases and each DB is consecrated with a virtualized drive along with logs. I am in a habit of taking regular backup on another system so, I have the backup of the virtual machine for each disk, which hosts the database. Since yesterday noon, I found that few employees are unable to use their mailboxes from OWA or Outlook. I saw that DB4 was unmounted and all suffering users were on DB4. This is the first sign of the problem. Now I googled for the same and found a process for understanding what actually had happened and found that DB was flagged as the “dirty Shutdown”.
So I searched for EDB recovery procedure and encountered solution over it. The solution was to execute eseutil /p and mh command and then, transferring the Log folder of that database away. At this point, I assumed that problem will be resolved but, it stayed in “index continent unknown” state. Then, I tried to establish a connection to the mailbox through OWA and after sometimes, I found that almost all mailboxes were accessible from Outlook as well as OWA. Still, three is offline for hours and OWA threw an error message – ‘Microsoft.Exchange.Data.Storage.MailboxOfflineException’.
I created a new DB instead of reloading all the DB4 drive backup because I do not want to lose last days email. Here, a good thing happened that these newly created database mailboxes came online. Now here comes the main point that ‘What would happen if I restored a DB4 backup after moving the mailboxes that comprised into the older DB4 to a new one? There are 2 identical mailboxes in 2 different DBs and now I am confused to determine which mailbox to connect as the AD user. After performing all this, I am unable to determine the actual solution to recover Exchange database mailbox emails from Unmountable Microsoft Exchange 2016. It is so because creating new databases, again and again, will result in occupying of unwanted space in the server. So, is there any expert who can help me out with this?”
Methods to Recover Emails From Unmountable Exchange 2016/2013
It is a high priority operation for Exchange administrators to retrieve emails from Microsoft Exchange 2016, 2013, etc. This maintains high availability of the saved content and the server in downstate is unacceptable. Following are some ways through which administrators can manually fix corrupt EDB file in unmountable mode:
Use ‘New-MailboxRepairRequest’ Command – You can execute ‘New-MailboxRepair Request’ PowerShell command to restore emails from Exchange Server. However, this might get failed in some conditions because it requires a database to be in the mounted state. Ensure the log file path for confirming whether the procedure is completed properly or not. Being an administrator, it is your duty to assure that all things are recovered properly. If you find that log files are not present that go to the next method.
- Use ‘ESEUTIL /p’ PowerShell Command – This command is used to deal with the damaged database file. You can also use Eseutil /d utility to perform defragmentation. When both these command gets completely executed then only, you should continue with the mounting procedure. The new database needs to be created and then, exporting of users mailboxes should be carried away.
- Execute Dial Tone Recovery Process – If the Exchange Server is unavailable then, users whose mailboxes are saved on that server will not be able to send/receive emails. The temporary mailbox could be stored on the any another server or on the same server. This dial tone portability feature is known as Exchange Dial Tone Recovery. This might prove itself as a boon in any disastrous situation. 3 different options are present for Dial Tone recovery and they are mentioned below:
- Create dial tone & database and perform its recovery on an alternative server
- Perform dial tone recovery on an identical server where database got failed
- Make use of the alternative server for email recovery
Following the same guidelines are followed to perform any one of the above-illustrated options:
- Generate a new and blank database for Dial tone recovery purpose and then, replace it with the failed database
- Perform the database restoration procedure
- Execute the swapping process in between the dial tone database and restored a database
- Now its time to merge both these databases to end up the process
Note: The manual methods mentioned above provides more disadvantage rather than advantages. Sometimes, user doesn’t get the desired result that you may not get the repaired Exchange database file. Also, it needs hands-on experience and technical knowledge to use this solution.
Use Third-Party Software – The Exchange Server Recovery Software provided SysTools is the all in solution that repair corrupt Exchange mailbox and EDB file without losing any data. This Recovery Manager for Exchange database tool provides the scan mode option i.e. Quick and Advance scanning option, which automatically recover mailbox from Exchange database and repair Exchange public folder database too. The software exports the healthy & recovered Exchange mailboxes to Live Exchange Server, Office 365, and various file formats.
The utility support all Exchange Server 2019 / 2016 / 2013 / 2010 / 2007 / 2003, MS Outlook and Windows OS versions. It easily export the user mailboxes and data items such as emails, contacts, calendars , etc… to the selected export option.
Key Features Of Automated Software
- Support public.edb file and private.edb file
- Preview MS Exchange mailbox items before conversion
- Extract mailbox from offline/dismounted Exchange database
- Option to decrypt emails from Exchange mailboxes in batch
- Export select EDB mailbox items by using date and categories filter option
- Preserve actual folder structure and keep metadata intact
Observational Verdict
It is like a common scenario for administrators to recover emails from unmountable Exchange 2016 / 2013. The Dial tone recovery procedure is beneficial in a situation where Exchange is unavailable. Administrators can also go for the solution mentioned above and get out of their issue without spending time to restore emails from Exchange Database with no data loss.
