Exchange Server is a complete communication solution provided by Microsoft. It is an appropriate messaging application which fulfills the needs of both employer and employee’s while remaining cost-effective and efficient in today’s cut-throat competition. It stores all information like e-mails, calendars, events and other mission-critical information in a database file named as ‘.edb.’ However, at certain times, when this .edb file exceeds the size limit of 16 GB in Exchange Server 2003, it becomes corrupt. In such situations, you won’t be able to mount your database and might come across an error. In order to get your valuable data back, you must opt for professional Exchange Recovery software.

As a practical case, when you try and mount the mailbox store in Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, you may not be able to do so. Additionally, the following event Ids may be logged in the Application event log:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: MSExchangeIS
Event Category: General
Event ID: 1112
Description: The database “Mailbox Store (Server Name)” has reached the maximum allowed size. Attempting to unmount the database.

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: ESE
Event Category: Space Management
Event ID: 445
Description: Information Store

The database D:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA\priv1.edb has reached its maximum size of 16383 MB. If the database cannot be restarted, an offline defragmentation may be performed to reduce its size.

Cause

The above situation surfaces when the .edb file of MS Exchange Server 2003 becomes corrupt after exceeding the size limit of 16 GB.

Resolution

In order to perform EDB Recovery, you must consider following steps:

A) In order to permanently avoid the problem, you must upgrade to Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2
B) Being the administrator, you can adopt the following steps:

1. Temporarily increase the database size limit by 1 GB, to enable this you must create the Temporary DB Size Limit Extension registry entry.
2. You can remove the not-so-significant database content
3. Go for offline defragmentation

In case, you are not able to overcome the problem, then you must go for a third-party Microsoft Exchange recovery software.

Stellar Phoenix Mailbox Exchange Recovery is an advanced software which repairs corrupt .edb files and recovers mailboxes as separate PSTs which can be directly imported in Outlook. Compatible with Exchange Server 5.5, 2000, 2003, and 2007, the Exchange Server Recovery software also performs recovery of deleted mailboxes.