Urgent Question about Exchange M: Drive!!

[MysticLlama]

Hey all,

I'm going to be implementing an Exchange server this weekend and everything was going perfect until I realized a little snag.

When I look at the properties of the M: Drive on my Exchange server, it shows the same amount of Free/Used Space as the C: Drive, but does not show all of the contents of the C Drive (it shows the domain, MBX folder, etc. like it is supposed to)

The problem with this is that the C: Drive is a small 14GB Partition, with 4 used, leaving 10GB free. I know that I have more than 10GB of mail to migrate into the system, so if the M: Drive stops there it'll totally screw me.

Here's the thing though, I have a 53GB D: Drive set up for the database and a 33.9GB L: drive set up for the logs. The D: is a partition off of the same set as C: which is a RAID5 across 3 disks, and the L: drive is a RAID1 mirror.

I've verified in my storage group and the database is pointing correctly at the D: drive, and the logs at the L: drive, though the system path location started as c:\Program files\exchsrvr\mdbdata and I changed it to d:\exchsrvr\mdbdata after the installation.

Why is it picking up the size of the C: drive as the size of the M: drive though, shouldn't it be reporting the size of the database drive? This is the part that has me really concerned.

Any clues/thoughts/ideas/advice???

I really need to clear this up before 1-2pm if at all possible, or I'm going to have to call the whole thing off because I'm a little nervous about it reporting that way.

TIA

 

[spyordie007]

the reason it is doing it is the default location for the mailstore (M:/) is:
C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\mdbdata

There are couple ways to solve this problem (or avoid it):

1. If you havent installed exchange yet just specify the drive you want it installed on (not your C drive) and it will put the mailstore in X:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\mdbdata where "X:\" is that drive.

2. If you dont have anything in the mailstore yet just delete it and create a new one in the location you want

3. If you do already have stuff in it that you dont want to loose than move it to the new location (cant remember how to do it now but looking on support.microsoft.com for documentation right now).

-Spy

 

[spyordie007]

hmm, I cant find any documentation on it but I think the way to go about moving an existing mailbox store would be to first dismount it in systems manager than move it to your other drive and go new>mailbox store specifying its existing location.

Warning I've never done this part before so I'm not entirely sure! If you have any doubts make sure to backup the store files ".edb" first! In fact make sure to back them up anyways, just in case!

-Spy

 

[MysticLlama]

See, that's where the weird part comes in.

Both the mailbox store and public folders store are pointing to the correct files on the D: Drive.

The only thing even on the C: Drive is a temp.edb that's like 20KB, and the temp.edb that's on the D: drive is bigger.

I have tried unmounting and remounting them making sure all the settings are right, and the files seem to be in the correct place, because MDBDATA on the C: Drive is empty except for that one tiny temp file.

The problem is the reporting on the size of the M: Drive in Explorer, it thinks that it has as much space as the C: Drive, but in reality, the files aren't on that drive anymore, so the size of the C: drive should be completely irrelevant.

 

[MysticLlama]

I came across this on TechNet:

The drive space values that are displayed for drive M are not related to the size of the information store. These values are not meant to be used for drive space monitoring; they refer to the drive space of the hard disk where you installed the Exchange 2000 computer. In Exchange 2000, drive M is a convenient handle for the Exchange Installable File System (ExIFS). ExIFS enables you to view and use the Exchange Server information store as a file system.

So it looks to me like it just has to do with where Exchange is installed, not how much it's using.

I guess it was screwing me up because the on the last Exchange server I worked with everything was installed on one big RAID5, so I could just check the size of the disk to see the space available, which worked, but I guess wasn't intended for that purpose.

Man, not a cool thing to come across when you're down to the last day before implementation of a new mail server for the whole company.

 

[spyordie007]

okay good, I hadnt realized that was the way it is setup.

I have 3 exchange servers I run (2 here at my job and another for the non-profit I work for) and on all of them I just have exchange installed on the drive I want the stores on so the size of "M" reports as the size of that drive...

What a nutty thing this exchange is, makes me wish we had a dedicated exchange admin here rather than a handfull of us that know "enough" about it to keep it running (most of the time)

-Spy