Granular recovery of mailboxes

RDB (RSG) is a special administrative database (storage group) in Exchange Server. It lets you extract data from the mounted mailbox database. The extracted data can be copied or merged to the existing mailboxes without disturbing user access to the current data.

For more information about RDB and RSG, refer to the following articles:

• Exchange 2010: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd876954
• Exchange 2007: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124039(v=exchg.80)
• Exchange 2003: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb123631(v=exchg.65)

To recover a mailbox

1. If a RDB/RSG does not exist, create it as described in the following articles:
   • Exchange 2010: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee332321
   • Exchange 2007: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa997694(v=exchg.80)
   • Exchange 2003: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124427(v=exchg.65)
2. Recover the database files to the RDB/RSG folder structure. For information about recovering database files, see "Recovering Exchange Server database files from a disk backup".
3. Mount the recovery database. For information about mounting databases, see "Mounting Exchange Server databases".
4. Proceed as described in the following articles:
   • Exchange 2010: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee332351
   • Exchange 2007: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa997694(v=exchg.80)
   • Exchange 2003: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998109(v=exchg.65)