How to restore single mail from Exchange Incrementals - appears only logs in the backups

[gjisrael1420]

Hello,

I am using backup 2010 R3 to backup exchange 2007 and 2010 saparately.I had setup of exchange data base backp as follows:

Monthly full backup job of Exchange database backup (selected Microsoft Information Store and all the database groups in the selection list) on last day of every month.

Daily Incremental backup job of Exchange database backup (selected Microsoft Information Store and all the database groups in the selection list) every day.

when i see to restore from full backup, i could able to see all the database groups and individual mails where i can select and restore.

but when i try to restore a mail of the specific day from the incremental backup, i could see only transaction log files in the incremantal backups.

please let me know if anyone have any suggestions that how can i restore a single mail from incrematnal backup.

Thanks,

[sbora]

Can you check if GRT option was enabled for incremental backups? If GRT was not selected then you will not see individual mails/mailboxes in the incremental backup set and it will only show logs.

Also if backup is going on tape then you will not see individual mails/mailboxes in the incremental backup set because GRT for incremental backups is supported only on b2d and not on tape.

[gjisrael1420]

Thank you, I am taking incrementals on tapes. Is there any option that i can take incremetnals backups on tapes to restore single mail from tapes.  

[sbora]

No GRT is not supported for incremental backups on tape. If you want GRT restores from incremental backup then go for disk based backups.

Run full backup of exchange databases more frequently. Full backup once a week and then incremental for rest of the week.

You can back this up to disk (b2d folder) followed by duplicate to tape. Duplicate set of incremental backup on tape again will not show individual mails for restore but you can restore from incrementals on disk.

If disk space is limited then you can overwrite the disk based backup sets every week or every two week and retain tape based backups for longer time.

If you do not want to use Disk and restore from incremental backups on tape then you will have to restore the entire database to Recovery Storage group (for Exchange 2007) OR Recovery database (for Exchange 2010) and then extract individual mails/mailboxes using the tools provided by exchange.

[Colin_Weaver]

Hmm if your Full works and your incrementals don't then it probably does not match this, but it might be worth you looking at

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH172176

[sbora]

Colin,

That technote will not apply here as the backups are not AVVI based and incremental backups are on tape.

[Thuwan]

i am getting Full Backup Each weekend and rest of the days i m getting incremental backups and mid of the week deferencial backup. i have exchange 2010 envirenment.

when i get incremental backups i can see only the transectional Logs only . i cannot see any mailsboxes inside.

how can i restore individual mails....