Exchange deleted "corrupted" emails in migration, help recovering

[drjones]

Here's the situation:

Client was running SBS 2008 / Exchange 2007.

We migrated them to Exchange 2013 / Server 2012.

Of course, the one user who can't afford problems, got hit; the main / most important partner is now missing emails.

What my sysadmin tells me happened is that some of the emails in his mailbox were corrupted and in the migration process to protect the rest of the mailbox, the corrupted emails were purged.

We have tried a variety of recovery methods without any luck, including re-exporting his mailbox on the old exchange server.

What other methods can we try to recover these "corrupted" messages?

Thanks

 

[Markverhyden]

How many?
Has the Sent box been checked in case the EU replied to the emails?
No backups?
There are a number of OST to PST converters, Stellar is one I've heard positive reviews about. I'd convert it to a PST then convert that to mbox format.

 

[drjones]

How many emails? That's the thing; we're not entirely clear. The partner just knows he is missing some.
I'd estimate under 1,000 emails.
And no, we don't have a backup of his PC because everything was supposed to be on the server.
Good call on the sent items! We will look!

 

[Markverhyden]

What about the old server? No access to the original stores?

Don't know about others but I'm really conservative when it comes to things like this. Even if others have said backups are taken care of, etc, etc I'll still make a manual copy of the local store. After all these are computers and we know how reliable they can be, especially when Murphy is hanging around. LOL!!!!

 

[lcoughey]

I'm with Mark...big mistake purging without a full backup.

 

[callthatgirl]

I would try Kernal OST to PST repair tool. I love it more than Stellar now. Get that OST!

 

[nlinecomputers]

What about the old server? No access to the original stores?

We have tried a variety of recovery methods without any luck, including re-exporting his mailbox on the old exchange server.

Sounds like there is still access. Time to start recovery options.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998074(v=exchg.65).aspx

 

[freedomit]

How many emails? That's the thing; we're not entirely clear. The partner just knows he is missing some.
I'd estimate under 1,000 emails.
And no, we don't have a backup of his PC because everything was supposed to be on the server.
Good call on the sent items! We will look!

Isn't there a log for the mailbox migration that tells you number of corrupted emails not transferred?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Of course, the one user who can't afford problems, got hit; the main / most important partner is now missing emails.

What do you mean.."got hit"? Got hit by malware? Ransomware? Computer got hit by lightening?

SBS2008...Exchange has default retention policy of 2 weeks. Do if a user deletes e-mails, unless he knows the hot key combo to "hard delete" an e-mail..deleted items that are cleared from the trash are actually "still in Exchange" for another 14 days by default.

Easily recovered.

I'm guessing the OST is useless...if the delete was done from Outlook, the OST would have "synced" with these deletes...so deleted mails are also not there in the OS...cuz..its followed the delete.

What migration step was this BTW? I don't see any good method that would require deletion of corrupted e-mails to proceed with the rest of the mailbox. Corrupted e-mails should not stop the train with a good migration process.

Another option...mount the infostore from the most recent backup prior to the migration...and export his mailbox to a PST.
Make a copy of that PST...so you have an original state of his mailbox just before migration...and do not touch this.
Work with the second PST.....do a comparison against his new mailbox on the new server...sync

 

[drjones]

Real quick guys:

1) I've learned my lesson big time & any & all future server / exchange migrations, we will be doing an image of all major player's workstations in case of stuff like this.

2) *WE* didn't purge the emails, it's my understanding that exchange automatically does this / purges corrupt emails when you migrate the mailbox from one server to another. I believe that even when my tech went to export directly to PST from the exchange server, the server does not export these "corrupted" emails to PST.

 

[TurricanII]

Something is amiss. It is unusual to run into 1000's of corrupt emails. Is your Exchange 2013 fully service packed? I have seen some odd email losses on Ex2013 when another company installed it from the original media and never put a single update on it!

I'd recover the mail database from the night before the backup to a recovery storage group on the old server (or restore the entire old server on a temporary offline system) and extract the data that way to avoid messing with the live environment. The restore will get the data back. Neither option needs downtime which is nice, but the restore can take ages if from slow USB drive!

 

[Markverhyden]

Sounds like there is still access. Time to start recovery options.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998074(v=exchg.65).aspx

Missed the second part about the old server for some reason. LOL!!! At any rate hopefully there are multiple server backups to work with. This is not looking good.