Question : Exchange restore using ntbackup

Hi,

Trying to restore a user's mailbox after Entourage deleted the entire inbox.

I have 2 BKF files. One is a full backup on 20th May the other contains only incrementals from 21st May to date.

When I create a RSG and resore the BKFs, the RSG database will not mount. I have not run ESEUTIL yet as I wanted to know if I should perhaps treat the two BKFs separately?

My thoughts were to restore the single full backup (which does mount) and then recreate the RSG and restore the differentials. I haven't tried this yet as don't want to make a dog's dinner of it.

Does anyone know if the above would work or if I should restore everything toa single database and run ESETUIL if it doesn't work.

many thanks.

Answer : Exchange restore using ntbackup

from your incremental backup set - you have to restore the logs

The full backup set with logs + incremental logs have to be in the same place for log replay.

The log replay just checks if all the logs are present (logs are sequentially numbered).

Exchange 2003, first writes data to logs and then to database.
Exchange restore process involves taking your last full database backup and adding message transactions one by one - by going through the entries in your logs.