Cannot determine free space available in Exchange database

Exchange Server does not include a utility that allows you to determine how much free space is available in an Exchange Server database. You may need to determine how much space is available to help you decide whether you need to perform an offline defragmentation.

Microsoft recognizes the need for people to determine how much free space is available in an Exchange Server database. In Exchange Server 5.5 and later, the amount of free space that is available in a database is displayed in an event that is logged in the event log after an online defragmentation of the database is performed. Note that the online defragmentation is performed automatically during normal information store maintenance. In addition, note that the event is logged in the event log even if the associated logging level is set to None.

Events that are similar to the following events are logged in the event log where nnn is the amount of free space that is available in megabytes.

NOTE: In Exchange 2000, the event ID 1221 message description contains the following text where storage_group is the name of the storage group, mailbox_store is the name of the mailbox store, server_name is the name of the Exchange 2000 Server computer, and nnn is the amount of free space that is available in megabytes.

NOTE: To determine the total space, make sure that you take the total of the event ID 1221 messages between the event ID 179 (beginning of full pass of OLD) and either event ID 180 (completed full pass of OLD) or 182 (completed resumed pass of OLD).

If one of the preceding events indicates that significant free space is available in the database and you recently performed an operation that may have caused a large number of objects to be removed from the database, you may want to perform an offline defragmentation. The following are some examples of operations that may cause a large number of objects to be removed from the database:

• Moving a large number of mailboxes to another mailbox store.
• Changing the retention time or disk quota for deleted items.
• Receiving a large number of messages (for example, junk e-mail), and then deleting the messages.

To perform an offline defragmentation of the database, perform the following steps.

NOTE: Microsoft recommends that you only perform an offline defragmentation of the database when you have performed an operation that caused a large number of objects to be removed from the database. Performing an offline defragmentation under any other circumstances may actually hurt database performance.

1. Stop the information store service:
   1. In Control Panel, double-click Services.
   2. Click the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service, and then click Stop. If a dialog box is displayed that states that additional services will be stopped, note the services that will be stopped, and then click OK.
2. Defragment the public and private information stores by using one of the following methods, as applicable:
   • In Exchange Server 5.5, to defragment the private information store, type eseutil /d /ispriv at a command prompt, and then press the ENTER key. To defragment the public information store, type eseutil /d /ispub at a command prompt, and then press the ENTER key.
   • In Exchange 2000, there is no /ispriv, /ispub, or /ds switch. You must specify the file name by typing the following at a command prompt
     eseutil /d d:\path\file_name.edb
     and then pressing the ENTER key.
3. Start the information store service:
   1. In Control Panel, double-click Services.
   2. Click the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service, and then click Start.
4. Start any additional services that were stopped when you performed step 1.
5. Perform a full online backup of the information store databases.

This feature is included in the latest Microsoft Exchange Server version 5.5 U.S. service pack. For information on obtaining the service pack, query on the following word in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (without the spaces): For more information, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: