The online defrag defrags data within the file. It doesn't change the file size.
What does event ID 1221 show in the application event log? If the whitespace is significant, then perhaps an offline defrag would be appropriate for you. William Lefkovics, MCSE, A+ -----Original Message----- From: Mike Zatkalik [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2001 11:25 AM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: Is the offline defrag my only choice? Hello, I am running Exchange Enterprise 5.5 SP3 on NT4 Enterprise Server. Before I started at this company, the previous Exchange admin wasn't deleting ANY mailboxes of old employees, which totaled approximately 11 GB that could be deleted. My pub.edb is just about up to 50GB, which takes almost 9 hours to backup, and I noticed after deleting roughly 4GB of old mailboxes, the edb file was still the same size. I really need to shrink this edb file, as the backups, and for that matter, the restore takes way too long. I am not 100% certain of the best, or safest, method to complete this process as I keep hearing conflicting stories. 1. Online defrag will free up the disk space, which is running nightly, but it's not clearing up space for me. These people also usually say that never run the offline defrag. 2. Offline defrag is the only method, and they use it on a regular basis, meaning once per month/every other month. Just looking for some more comments and/or concerns of doing the offline defrag, since the nightly online defrag isn't doing anything to free up space. TIA, ~Mike Z List Charter and FAQ at: http://www.sunbelt-software.com/exchange_list_charter.htm List Charter and FAQ at: http://www.sunbelt-software.com/exchange_list_charter.htm