[kbensch]

Hi

I have a exchange 2003 sbs system that recently had to run an offline defrag cause the mailstore went over 16GB. Now after the offline defrag I was able to get in and clear some space, but the size of the priv1 edb and stm is still nearly 16gb but when i look at the total mailbox sizes in the exchange admin it is less than 6gb. Why is this and how do i get the db to show the actual size and not the inflated size?

Thanks for the help

Kobus

[danielp]

Look again at event id 1221 and see how much free space you've got in there.

BTW, you should be running Exchange 2003 SP2, that'll allow you to grow from the default 18 GB (unlike the max 16 GB without it) to 75 GB max.

See my site for more info on that.

[Sembee]

Adding up the sizes of the mailboxes and looking at the size of the store will never be the same. There are many reasons why they are not the same, based on how Exchange stores the data, deleted item retention etc. As Daniel has already pointed out, you should upgrade to Exchange 2003 SP2 (as well as the other updates for SBS) and look at event ID 1221 to see how much free space there is in the store.
The physical size of the Exchange databases do not shrink on their own, only after an offline defrag. And while with pre SP2 system the physical size of the store was used for the limit, that was changed with SP2 and the actual amount of data is used.

Simon.