By: Michele L. Deo, MCSE, CUSE

 

 

 Microsoft Exchange Recovery Types - Deleted Items Recovery

 

Back to home page 

 

 With Microsoft Exchange 2000, Administrators and designers have new areas to consider when capacity planning and developing recovery processes for the Microsoft Exchange 2000 data store.  Not only is there now the components for the Web store, but in addition to the various ways pure mail data can be restored for MS Exchange users.

 

Administrators first line of defense

If you setup your system with the Deleted Item Retention, and your user goes to delete something from his/her inbox, depending on the time frame for this setting on your server, the user would be able to move the item out of their Deleted Items folder from within their mailbox.  But if an additional setting should be configured on your servers to provide the administrator with an additional line of defense.

This first line of defense requires a couple of settings to made on the Outlook client itself, and it's my recommendation that an administrator makes the change instead of the user.  It requires using the registry editor, which is always a risk for a normal user to make modifications within the registry.

Overview of the steps that need to happen:

• Modify the Client Registry from a Windows 98 client
• Create the New Outlook Profile
• Recover the Deleted Mailbox Item

Modify the Client Registry:

1.  Click Run from the Start Menu
2.  Type Regedit and click OK
3.  Highlight My Computer and click File and then Export
4.  Type a myreg<date> and click Save
5.  After the registry has been exported, browse to the key you need to modify:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange\Client\Options
6.  Click Edit and then New DWORD value
7.  The value that you want to type is DumpsterAlwaysOn
8.  Double-click and change the value data to 1

Designer Note: Triggering this setting will increase your storage needs on the MS Exchange server, which will need to be taken into consideration for capacity planning and recovery timeframes for this server. Remember that a Microsoft Exchange Server storage calculation is (# of users * xxmb) * 110% for recovery

Create the New Outlook Profile:

Once the Registry setting is created, you will need to create a new profile in order to pickup the new registry setting.

1.  Log your desktop onto into the domain with the appropriate client profile.
2.  Click on the Start menu and click Control panel
3.  Double click the mail icon to create a new Outlook Profile.  The mail icon is the mailbox in front of the globe.
4.  Click Show Profiles and then click Add
5.  Follow Outlook Setup wizard and check Microsoft Exchange Server, click Next
6.  In the Profile name, type the name of the users mailbox, and then click next
7.  Type the name of the users Exchange server and their logon name
8.  Click next and then finish.
9.  From the pull down menu, select the users profile as the default Outlook profile

Recovery Deleted Mailbox Item:

1.  Double-click on the Outlook icon which is on the desktop to connect to the MS Exchange server
2.  If you have multiple profiles, select the profile you created above
3.  Click on the folder that you are recovering from either through the Outlook shortcut bar or from the folder list view
4.  Click from the menu bar, Tools, then Recover deleted items.  You will be presented with a Recovery Deleted items From - <folder you chose> which will list the subjects and the dates that the items were deleted.
5.  Select the item that you wish to recover and then click on the restore icon, which is shown as a envelope with an arrow moving to the right above it.
6.  The restored item will appear as unread in the folder that it was originally deleted from and available for your use.
7.  Click Exit from the file menu to exit Outlook.

Return to the top