The MS Exchange Server stores the users’ mailboxes in its database files, which are called the EDB files. Whenever a user checks his email account, the Exchange Server searches the EDB database and delivers the messages to the user’s inbox as soon as it locates them. Therefore, we can say that the EDB files act as pointers for the Server to trace the users’ emails when they access their mailboxes through MS Outlook.
Now, as with all the other files, the EDB files are also highly sensitive and prone to damage or corruption. The reasons for the corruption may be different, but their impact is the same, i.e., the situation of crucial data loss as the EDB files become inaccessible. Every attempt of the users to access their mailboxes is met with an error message. The best way of retrieving the data is such circumstances is repairing the corrupt or damaged EDB files and converting them from EDB to PST format so that they can be viewed via MS Outlook. And this is best done by making use of a third-party EDB to PST Converter.
Reasons for EDB corruption-
The disastrous situation where the users lose their important email data such as emails, drafts, contacts, attachments, notes, calendar items, tasks, journals, etc. is caused by the corruption of the EDB files. But, what causes MS Exchange or EDB file corruption? Well, the reasons may be many and some of the common ones are:
- MS Exchange Server failure or crash
- Hardware malfunctioning
- File Head corruption
- Log files’ deletion
- Server error code 528
- Upgrading
- Users’ mailboxes deletion, accidental or intentional
- Dirty shutdown caused by power failure
- Virus attacks
Resolving the issue -
Regardless of the cause of EDB file damage or corruption, solving the problem and recovering the inaccessible data is not all that simple. The first step should be to try for conversion of MS Exchange EDB to MS Outlook PST by using the free tool that is from Quick Recovery. These utilities include Export-Mailbox, Exmerge.exe and Eseutil.exe and they extract the corrupted mailbox data and convert EDB to PST format. The only drawbacks of these utilities are that their effectiveness is limited to cases of minor corruption, and they entail the risk of loss of some data. A better option is for converting EDB to PST by using one of the several available third party conversion tools.
