copying exchange server 5.5 sp4

Mary -

As you correctly noted, the "forklift" procedure requires an off-line backup but that is only because you want the new server to *exactly* reflect the old one and the only way to accomplish that is to take the old server off-line so no newtransactions can occur while the backup is going on.

However, for what you want to do, you can use an on-line backup and you will have no downtime on your production server. What you will do is build your test server with Exch v5.5 SP4 (same as production) and then do a restore of the on-line backup. When it asks whether to over-write all existing data, tell it "yes". (I believe it actually asks 'Erase all Existing Data'). You'll also probably want to restore only the priv.edb and pub.edbfiles and then use the DS/IS Consistency Adjuster to rebuild the dir.edb database.

What you'll have then is a test server that mirrors the production server as of the date and time that the on-line backup started. Among other benefits, this alsotests your backups to make sure you're writing good data on a good tape.

paul

I've gone through our restorable files and am having trouble finding the .edb files. I can find edb.chk and many log files, but not the specific priv.edb, pub.edb, dir.edb files. I can see them on the exchange server under exchgsrvr\mdbdata, but all that shows up under that directory on the backup listing are the .chk and log files. Would it be somewhere else? We are using backup exec 8.5 as our backup server running a full backup on exchange with the exchange module installed. Thanks!