Restore Exchange Server 2003 via NTBackup Successful but emails not restored

[Xelement]

Hi,

I have this strange problem that has taken me days to troubleshoot but still can’t figure this out. Following the instructions on this site: http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Exchange-2003-Backup-Restore-NTBACKUP.html

I use Windows SBS 2003 Standard Edition with Exchange 2003 included as part of the package. I used NT Backup to backup the Exchange. When I restore it (using NT Backup), everything went smooth and the message on NTBackup said “Successful” and so did the message in Event Viewer. But, the reality was when I checked (via MS Outlook 2003), the messages were not restored. The only thing that was restored was the tasks in the “Public Folders”. Can anyone help me, please….? Thank you so much in advance…

 

[ZeroHour]

Hi
Firstly what exactly has happened?
I take it you were backing your exchange up and then had a failure and had to recover using ntbackup or what?
Do you need to restore all mailboxes or one?
Have you tried a restart after the restore?

 

[Xelement]

Hi ZeroHour,

When I backed up using ntbackup, it was all good, well the report from the backup itself and event viewer said so. Likewise, when I restored using ntbackup, everything was good too, but strangely nothing happened. When I checked the user mailbox (via MS Outlook), the emails that were deleted were not restored.

I am just wanting to restore some emails in one mailbox only. I already did .pst backups on all users mailboxes, therefore overwriting the entire mailbox wouldn't matter cause I can import the .pst files back later (for all users).

Hope this clarifies it a bit more.

 

[ZeroHour]

Ahh one mailbox emails limits your options. What they call "Brick Level" backups usually need rights to the mailbox to properly back them up.
A test would be to backup your sever but not check exchange and do a file backup. If your backups are not a huge amount different then you know ntbackup does not have permissions to brick level backup mailboxes.