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Recovering mail for a user that does not exist (or moved, etc.)

This issue has come up a couple times lately, and was being discussed this morning internally, so I thought it would be helpful to provide some updated links on Exchange 2003 recovery of mailbox data.

From the Exchange 2003 Operations Guide, first up is the How Recovery Storage Groups Work in Exchange Server 2003. This is your first stop for the when you can and when you can't use RSG's. In general, RSG's work well for environments that don't change their Exchange infrastructure often, and near-term recovery for users that still exist (you have turned up your deleted item retention days, right?).

They have some limitations though, and those are spelled out in the article. The most notable one for business day-to-day operations is that RSG's cannot be used for mailboxes that have been deleted from the current system (AD or Exchange mailbox no longer exists), or that have been moved to other databases or servers since the backup date.

In these cases we consult the How to Recover a Purged Mailbox from an Online Backup Using the Original Database Server article. Or, as is my preference, use your recovery server for this task.

If you would like to find out more about why these restrictions exist for RSG operation, see How the Recovery Database Links Back to the Original Database.