Exchange database (.edb) file is the most important file of Microsoft Exchange server e-mail application. Sometimes, Exchange server database simply refuses to access data from user mailboxes. Can you guess what is the responsible reason for such behavior? Here is the answer, corruption of EDB files is one of the reason. Corruption occurs due to many reasons like, malicious virus, human errors, unexpected system shutdown, operating system failure, corruption of file system, application crash, even Anti-virus scanning. Corruption does not allow you to access the data. But inaccessibility can be easily overcome with the help of an updated backup. However, if the backup is not available, then it is advised to go for a third party Exchange recovery tool so that you become able to access your valuable data after recovery.

To further clarify above issue, suppose you use Exchange server in your organization. On one day, when you start Exchange server, you observed quite strange behavior with an error message like:

1067 The information store terminated abnormally.

When you perform online defragmentation on Exchange information store database, it does not complete successfully and generates below mentioned event in the application event log:
Date: date
Source: ESE
Time: time
Category: (12)
Type: Error
Event ID: 447
User: N/A
Computer: Servername

Description:
Information Store (nnnn) A bad page link (error -327) has been detected in a
B-Tree (ObjectId: 19, PgnoRoot: 113) of database E:\Program
Files\Exchsrvr\mdbdata\priv1.edb (3440582 => 3443648, 3443232).

Event ID 447 shows that the logical database structure of the Information store has become corrupted.

Cause:

Following reasons will lead to above abrupt situation:

• Exchange Server crashed.
• During an exchange database restoration, some incorrect log files were replayed.
• Hardware issue.
• Missing, corrupt or removed database log files may also lead you to above situation that were not completely committed to the Exchange database.
• An antivirus program is scanning Exchange database directory.
• Database log files have been removed that were not fully committed to the database.

Solution:

A bad page link ( -327) error indicates a logical corruption at the Jet level in the Exchange server database. For solving this problem, it is advised you to go for below mentioned suggestions:

• Restore database from last available online backup.
• In case, online backup does not exist, use hard repair (eseutil /p) method to repair corrupt database. This command line utility analyze database for errors. If it encounters any error in database pages that can not be corrected, it simply removes those pages and moves further. Thus, this command sometimes can create some serious data loss situations.
• Use a third party Exchange database recovery application. Such third party tools help to prevent any potential data loss problems and repair database in an effective way

The third party applications provide well described procedures, good recovery abilities, and quality oriented features. Select a software of a reliable company because many companies make false commitments for the promotion of their product.

—About The Author—
Author of this post is an Exchange Server administrator and doing research on an Exchange recovery application which is a proficient tool that used to recover Exchange database and its mailboxes with complete e-mail components, such as contacts, messages, appointments, attachments, journal, tasks, event, and journal.

Author: Axel