How is this Exchange 2000 set up?

[hamish]

Hello

I have just inherited a Windows 2000 server, with Exchange 2000 on it, but I'm not sure how it is set up. The thing puzzling me is this:

Normally, in the Exchange data folder, I'm used to seeing files like .pub and .stm and .edb. In those files, ormally all of the mail and calendar stuff is saved.

Howeve,r with this client, in the Exchange data folder, each user seems to have his own folder, and inside that, folders for Inbox, calendar, contacts etc. Each folder, especially the Inbox folder, seems to be populated with .EML files (I think they were called eml anyway).

Has this been set up so that each email is an individual file?

Or is it something totally different?

Thanks

Hamish

[cluberti]

Are you certain that's not exchange 5.5?

[hosebeast]

No version of Exchange does that. Microsoft Mail (the predecessor to Exchange, from the early 90's) was the last product to use file-based storage.

However, Exchange 2000 introduced an IFS (Installable File System) which dynamically maps the Information Store's contents to a drive letter so that it looks like file-based storage. By default, this drive letter is M, but it can be configured by modifying the registry and metabase.

The original intent of the M drive was to make it simpler for corporate developers to write collaboration and workflow apps. The "average" (think VB-oriented) developer was frequently baffled by MAPI, CDO, DAV, ADSI/LDAP, ExOLEDB, etc. but with the M drive, they merely needed to know how to access text files.

Unfortunately, a number of third-party utilities caused problems for the M drive. The most common scenario involved antivirus programs which tried to treat the M drive as a real file system. At best, this resulted in bad performance problems when people were double-scanning their email by running both an Exchange-aware scanner and a file-based scanner. At worst, the result was corruption of the database because utilities tried to manipulate ACLs (permissions) or other low-level attributes which were valid for real files but not the virtual files of the M drive.

That's why Exchange 2003 ships with the M drive disabled by default. Organizations that need it (and understand how to manage it) can turn it on.

Anyway, to locate the true database files in Exchange 2000, go into ESM (Start > Programs > Microsoft Exchange > System Manager). Drill down to your server, and expand the storage group(s). If you are running Standard Edition, you can only have one storage group. By default, it is named "First Storage Group." In the properties of the storage group, you can see the transaction log path and system data path. Drill down another level and you will find the Mailbox Store and Public Folder Store. Go into properties of each store and you will find the exact path and filename of the edb and stm files.