Error running incremental backup after exchange dirty shut down
Problem = After a dirty shut down on your exchange mail store you are unable to make incremental backups
Solution
Exchange Server 2003
Eseutil /R Recovery Mode
Recovery refers to the process of playing transaction log files into a database. There are two kinds of recovery:
- Hard recovery: A transaction log replay process that occurs after restoring a database from an online backup.
- Soft recovery: A transaction log replay process that occurs when a database is re-mounted after an unexpected stop, or when transaction logs are replayed into an offline file backup copy of a database.
For more information about hard and soft recoveries, see "Transaction Log File Replay: Soft Recovery and Hard Recovery in Exchange Server 2003" (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=68147).
For more information about instructions for running Eseutil in recovery mode, see How to Run Eseutil /R in Recovery Mode.
Hard Recovery
Hard recovery occurs when transaction log files must be replayed into a restored online backup. In all other recovery scenarios, soft recovery is done. Hard recovery can be done with Eseutil by using the Restore mode (/C).
Soft Recovery
In the default soft recovery scenario, an external event unexpectedly stops an Exchange database, but the database and log files remain intact and in place. When the database is mounted again, Exchange reads the checkpoint file and begins to replay the transaction log that is listed as the checkpoint log. If no checkpoint file exists, replay begins with the oldest log file available in the transaction log folder for the storage group.
Exchange writes completed transactions to the database files found in the log file that have not already been written and reverses any incomplete transactions. Exchange never begins writing a transaction into the database files until all the operations composing it have been secured to the log files. You do not need to physically undo or back out of a transaction in the database if all uncommitted transaction logs present at the time of the unexpected stop are present when replay begins.
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Important:
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A fundamental assumption of the soft recovery process is that no database or log files have been moved, deleted, or destroyed by the failure—or by the administrator after the failure.
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A database that has been moved to a different path location. This capability is available only in Exchange 2003.
Hard recovery has always been able to finish successfully, even if Exchange databases have been moved to different path locations since a backup was done, but until Exchange 2003, soft recovery could only work if the database files were in the same drive path as that defined in the transaction log files to be replayed.
In Exchange 2003, the /D switch was added to Recovery mode to allow override of the database path hard coded in the transaction log files. This new capability is very useful when restoring offline copies of databases to Recovery Storage Groups, or when recovering a “missing” database as described in the scenario above.
You can now copy a database and a group of transaction logs into any folder you desire, and successfully run soft recovery. Once the database is consistent, you can then move it to any other path desired, and attach it to a different log stream.
For more information, see the following topics in the Exchange Server Database Utility Guide:
