Extract Mailboxes from demoted SBS 2003 Server

[seedubya]

One of my staff fscked up. He was doing a move from SBS 2003 to 2012 Essentials AND a move from Exchange to Google Apps the same day on the same domain. I still don't know why but he neglected to import mail from Exchange to Google, then demoted the server as part of the move to the new server. The domain transfer process failed twice and he was forced to rebuild the domain from scratch. He then failed to export PSTs from the client machines before disjoining the old domain and joining the new. All in all a bloody disaster!

So on my bench at the moment is the old server. It's now not on a domain and none of the exhange services will start so I cannot run exmerge to extract the mailboxes.

Anyone know how to proceed from here?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Give these guys a call
http://www.krollontrack.com/data-recovery/e-mail-recovery-software/

 

[krtechsolutions]

guessing the users' outlook profiles were running in online mode?

 

[TecPCPro]

This is my nightmare... and why I always image servers before any major updates or work.. plus a weekly image and nightly backups of exchange and files/db's. Does the client have no disaster recovery procedures at all? hope you get it sorted fella..

 

[seedubya]

so it turns out that they were in offline mode! I have OST files and have started the conversion process.

Phew.....

Employee on written warning (stage before dismissal) for carelessness leading to potential data loss

 

[nlinecomputers]

My own personal sbs 2003 server(which really wasn't running on server hardware) went belly up while I was in the process of signing up for Office 365 from my action pack to replace it. The b i t c h knew her time was up and just up and died. Turned a casual migration in to an emergency. Luckily I am a company of me, myself and I so I had only my one mailbox to deal with and I was able to just use the OST file. I could have restored the server to a VM or even new hardware if I had to but that was overkill for this situation. OST files are nice.

 

[marley1]

offline cached mode is great for issues like this.

but if you had the edb wouldn't have been that bad.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

For different active directory though (or now non-existant), if I call with the OST files, they're still dependent on the NT authentication of the user account it was bound to, no? Requiring one of those 3rd party tools to bust it open.

 

[nlinecomputers]

I forget the name of the tool I used but it converted the OST into a PST file which you import into your mailbox via outlook. If you need the name I can find it.

 

[seedubya]

I'm using OST2 Enterprise http://ost2.com/enterprise.aspx. We already had it from an emergency job we did last year.