The Best approach to recover and repair any EDB file

If you are looking for a perfect solution to recover your exchange database file, then you’ve come to the right place.

Lets have a close look at some of the EDB recovery techniques :

Exchange database Recovery

1. ExMerge

ExMerge, although outdated, is a free to use utility from Microsoft that is capable of extracting mailboxes from exchange databases and saving them as Outlook PST. The PST files can then be imported into Outlook. Do keep in mind that ExMerge works with Outlook version 2003 only.

Using Exmerge

Open ExMerge and Click Next

Choose Extract or Import (Two Step Procedure) and Click next.

Choose the Step 1 Extract data from an Exchange Server Mailbox option and proceed.

Provide the exchange server details to establish connection.

Select EDB.

Select the mailboxes that you wish to export to PST.

Choose a preferred location to save the PST files and proceed

You can see that the process has now begun and once completed, ExMerge can be closed.

Advantages of ExMerge

Free and native utility

Works well when the connection to Exchange server is live.

Disadvantage

Rather cumbersome

Could require some technical know-how

Slow process

No guaranteed retrieval of all information

2. Powershell Method

There are some prerequisites to this method and it is better to know what they are before attempting exchange database recovery via powershell

technical know-how is must

Should be able to use Powershell with full admin rights

Must be aware of what the cmdlets being executed actually do.

Willing to overlook information losses that might happen.

If the above mentioned prerequisites seem a bit too much then there is another easier and more reliable way to achieve complete exchange recovery , see the third method mentioned here for more details on the same.

Steps for recovery

Login into mail server.

Open command prompt as an administrator and use the following command : eseutil /mh exchange-database.edb

Now use the below command to repair the exchange-database.edb file : eseutil /r E02 /l “E:\EXDB12\Exchange Server\exchange-database\Logs” /d “E:\EXDB12\Exchange Server\exchange-database\File”

Let’s now create a recovery database:

New-MailboxDatabase -Server mail01 -Name RECDB -Recovery -EdbFilePath “E:\EXDB12\Exchange Server\ exchange-database\File\exchange-database” -LogFolderPath “E:\EXDB12\Exchange Server\exchange-database\Logs”

Thereafter, execute the following command to mount the recovery database:

Mount-Database RECDB

To get a list of the mailboxes from the database, use the following commands:

Get-MailboxStatistics -Database RECDB | fl –auto

To import the mailboxes from above steps to exchange server, use the following:

New-MailboxRestoreRequest -SourceDatabase RECDB-SourceStoreMailbox “Dat, S” -TargetMailbox newdatS –AllowLegacyDNMismatch

In the above command, Dat, S is the name of the old mailbox that you will replace the newdats, which is the name of the new mailbox.

Use Get-MailboxRestoreRequest to check the if the above command has been completed without any errors.

It is important that you remove the restore request as detailed below if Step * returns “Status Completed”:

Get-MailboxRestoreRequest -Status Completed | Remove-MailboxRestoreRequest

To export the mailboxes that have been restored to PST, use the following:

New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox dats -FilePath //loc/PST/dats.pst

Repeat Steps 8 through 9 to check for completion of the above command.

To delete the original mailbox after PST creation, use:

Disable-Mailbox dats@abc.com

Delete the recovery database using the following command:

Remove-MailboxDatabase -Identity “RECDB”

Advantages of the above method

Free and native

Works fairly well if you’ve requisite technical skills.

Disadvantages

Rather long and complex process

Information loss is possible

Time consuming

User must be technically sound

Using a professional utility

The easiest and most efficient among all is to use the EdbMails EDB to PST Converter tool. It is used by hundreds of IT admins across the world and enjoys their trust as the most user friendly and advanced exchange database repair solution.

Here’s a few things that make EdbMails must try:

Quick Recovery

EDB file heavily corrupted? No problem EdbMails can handle it well.

Encrypted files supported

Simple EDB to PST conversion with no size limit

Guaranteed results

Even users who lack technical skills can use with ease

No need of cumbersome cmdlet executions.

No loss of information

Free demo to extensively try out all the features

EdbMails supports Exchange server versions 2016/2013/2010/2007/2003 and Outlook versions 2016/2013/2010/2007

Conclusion

Although we discussed a few solutions for exchange recovery in this article, the first two had some disadvantages like them being slow and needing manual intervention from time to time or requiring rather high technical know-how. However the third solution, that is, using the all in one exchange recovery utility from EdbMails EDB to PST Converter is perfect as it can deliver satisfactory results quickly and in a risk free manner.