offline defrag

Also, my priv.edb resides on d drive which have enough space to run the eseutil.exe. However, the eseutil.exe resides in c:\program files\exchsrvr\bin which doesn't have enought space. Should I copy the whole bin directory to d: and than run the eseutil.exe?

Thanks

Kit

According to the Exchange Server 5.5 Resource guide, ESEUTIL will defrag at the speed of approximately 10GB per hour.
A couple of cautionary notes:
1. Database defragmentation automatically occurs in the background. You should not do an offline defrag unless you have a specific reason to (i.e. you need to reduce the size of the database file).
2. Microsoft recommends not running ESEUTIL unless directed by Microsoft Technical Support. It is not intended to be a regular maintenance tool.
Other tidbits:
The disk space requirements for running offline defragmentation applies to the disk where the database resides.
Manually moving the \BIN directory (or any other directory) any place would probably result in Exchange no longer functioning and your need to either restore or reinstall your server.

There are conflicting statements in Microsoft docs about whether or not to run offline defrags. I find a lot of the cautions about it are unnecessary. The rule of thumb that I follow was given to me by a Microsoft Exchange tech support specialist - if your database has more than 10% free space in it AFTER the online defrag has run, then you should do an offline defrag. In your case, if you are showing 1.2GB of free space in your database after your online defrags have run, then you should runan offline defrag. To find out how much free space is left after your online defrag, look in the app event log on your Exchange server for informational event #1221 from MSExchange - these are events that are generated by the on-line defrag after itruns. The other reason, of course, is if you need to free up space on the drive for some reason. That said, you do want to be careful and make sure you have a backup copy of your .edb files before you run the offline defrag. Also, as you obviously already know, you need to have enough space on your drive to run the defrag - recommended 1.1 times the size of your database (i.e., - in your case you should have about 14GB of free space to be on the safe side.) And of course Exchange will be down completely during the time you are running the defrag. You can defrag an Exchange .edb on a completely different machine from your Exchange server. All you need to do is copy the eseutil.exe, exchmem.dll and ese.dll files from the Exchange Server (they are in the \winnt and/or \winnt\system32 folders) to the location where you want to run the defrag. Then, copy the database there, too, defrag it and then copy it back to the live server location.

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