XADM: Private or Public Information Store Option Is Not Available

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The public information store is contained in the Pub.edb file which is located, by default, in the \Exchsrvr\Mdbdata directory. The private information store is contained in the Priv.edb file which is also located, by default, in the \Exchsrvr\Mdbdata directory. You may back up the private or public information store separately by choosing to perform an offline backup of either of these files. Use the following procedure to perform an offline backup of these files:

1. Open Control Panel, double-click Services, and stop the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service.
2. Start Windows NT Backup and choose Drives, instead of Microsoft Exchange, to perform a file-based backup.
3. Choose the drive and directory where the Priv.edb and Pub.edb are located, select the check box for one of these two files, and then click the Backup button.
4. Repeat step 3 to back up the other file.

When you stop the Exchange Information Store service, all the message transactions from the Exchange log files are written into the Exchange databases. When this backup is done, you effectively have all the mail backed up to that point.

If you need to restore this offline backup in the future, you will be unable to incorporate Exchange log files created in the future into the restored offline backup, so you could potentially lose messages. You should perform online backups of your Exchange Server database files and that you disable circular logging. If circular logging is enabled, differential and incremental backups cannot be performed. For more information, please see the "Backup and Restore" section of Chapter 15 in the "Microsoft Exchange Server Administrator's Guide."