How to turn on or turn off circular logging in Exchange 2000 Server and Exchange Server 2003

This step-by-step article explains how to turn on or turn off the circular logging feature. You can control circular logging at the storage group level, which allows each storage group to have a different policy for logging.

Circular logging allows Exchange Server to overwrite transaction log files after the data that the log files contain has been committed to the database. However, if circular logging is enabled, you can recover Exchange Server data only up until the last full backup.

Turn on or turn off circular logging

1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Exchange, and then click System Manager.
2. Expand Server, right-click the storage group that you want to change, and then click Properties.
3. In the Properties dialog box, click to select or clear the Enable Circular Logging check box to turn circular logging on or off.
4. Click OK. When you are prompted to confirm that you want to continue, click Yes.
5. Restart the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service. To do this, follow these steps:
   1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Services.
   2. In the right pane, click Microsoft Exchange Information Store. Then, click Restart on the Action menu. If you receive a message that other services will also be restarted, click Yes.