Question:
Is there a way to perform a selective restore? I need to restore just one mailbox or public folder. I’m using the NT backup/restore utility.
Answer:
I’m afraid not. What you’re talking about is brick backups, which back up and restore a single mailbox or folder. NT Backup doesn’t do it, at least not with Exchange 5.5.
What you’ll need to do is restore your entire Exchange server to an extra server that is offline. Once you’ve done that, open the mailbox or folder and export the items in it to a .PST file. Bring that .PST file to your production server and reimport those contents into the mailbox or folder.
If that sounds like a pain in the [posterior], that’s because it is. But if that data is important enough to you it’s worth it.
Exchange 2000 makes this a little easier, by the way—by letting you save mailboxes in multiple information stores and backing up/restoring those stores individually.
