Almost as scary as the horror story I experienced.... It was a small company with no money to invest in IT and I had just been hired to try and get some order back in support and let the IT manager get back to DB development which was his area of expertise. I hadn't used exchange before (or even AD, but I was an experienced Novell admin and skills were pretty transferable back then...) From what I remember the server was exchange 2000 and kept running out of space. At the time I had no idea that there were no backups on any of the servers...
One morning, not long after I joined exchange ran out of space again and stopped working. The director jumped onto the box and told me he was deleting some transaction logs. I didn't think too much of this until about 5 minutes passed and I looked over and he had turned white and looked like he was going to pass out. Turns out he had just deleted everything from the log directory, but also the database and streaming database as they had all been put in the same place. All too big for the recycle bin too.... Long story short, after a couple of thousand pounds and many days work we managed to recover nothing of use and lost over 5 years' worth of email for the whole company! Somehow we both kept our jobs too, no idea how. I've never worked for anywhere that doesn't put a priority on backups since J From: Sobey, Richard A [mailto:r.so...@imperial.ac.uk] Sent: 27 February 2012 09:09 To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: RE: URGENT - Exchange 2003 database on D: deleted! It's one of the scariest things that can happen to be honest. Hope you're still drinking that beer :) From: bounce-9491670-8066...@lyris.sunbelt-software.com [mailto:bounce-9491670-8066...@lyris.sunbelt-software.com] On Behalf Of David Mazzaccaro Sent: 26 February 2012 20:40 To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: RE: URGENT - Exchange 2003 database on D: deleted! Thx! He had to create blank DBs - BackupExec needed to see "something" there to restore over. That and the little problem of D: not being shared (D$) after HP recreated the array. After 12 hours yesterday, and another 9 hours today...I think a single beer would kill me (but I'm willing to find out) LOL I'd like to say that I am very grateful for the help I get on this list (and on a weekend nonetheless). My meager participation has not even come close to all the help I have received over the years. Thank you. From: Graeme Carstairs [mailto:loonyto...@gmail.com]<mailto:[mailto:loonyto...@gmail.com]> Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2012 3:30 PM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: Re: URGENT - Exchange 2003 database on D: deleted! no probs, Glad it worked out. Just create new db's and restore into them? Pretty sure thats basically what you do but it's hard to say by email. Just thought I'd try and put your kind at ease that as long as your backups sound you'll be ok. Glad it worked have a beer you deserve it Graeme On Sunday, 26 February 2012, Graeme Carstairs wrote: When exchange is up its a tick box, but look at your log files if you have files dated back to your last backup and over approx 5Mbs worth then it's not enabled and you should have logs Formosa every transaction that's occurred since last backup. If you are that nervous and it's your production system I would work with ms, especially of your company will sign off on the cost. It's really just 2 things is your backup sound, and is circular logging off. If Backup sound your back to where the backup started. If circular logging disable your back to where you crashed. Another tip if you can copy the logs somewhere do so befor you start as with the logs and backup your sorted. Graeme On Sunday, 26 February 2012, David Mazzaccaro wrote: Thank you for the reply. On the phone w/ Microsoft right now. I am really nervous, have no idea what is going on. 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