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Large Mailboxes - 17.Oct.2007 5:01:05 AM

trevorc

Posts: 64
Joined: 11.Jul.2006
Status: online

Hi,

I have Exchange 2K SP3. One of my mailboxes is over 3.2Gb big. I do archiving every week and keep mail of the last 6 months.

Are there any issues with having such big mailboxes? Is it more prone to corruption and will this mailbox be slower than normal?

Thanks.

_____________________________

Trevor Camilleri
ATD, MCP

Post #: 1

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RE: Large Mailboxes - 18.Oct.2007 5:26:55 PM

jassyca

Posts: 225
Joined: 20.Jul.2006
Status: offline

Not sure if it's more prone to database corruption (kind of doubt it) but you'll probably find that Outlook is painfully slow when you first open it. Especially if that 3.x gig translates into tens of thousands of small to medium messages.

When you archive, are you also archiving and clearing out the "Sent Items" folder? Whenever my users hit their mailbox limit, it's usually because they didn't realize they have all this junk in the "Sent Items" folder. It just seems ridiculous that you archive constantly yet the mailbox still has over 3 gig in it. Are the message it gets really monsterously huge? Wow..

Oh, since you mentioned archiving.. there's a "known" problem with Outlook 2000 archives (or "personal data files" or whatever the new buzz word that Microsoft is using). If an archive gets close to 2 gig, it can get corrupted and you could, potentially, lose the ability to access all the messages in it. I know they fixed it by Outlook 2003 but I'm not sure if Outlook 2002 had the problem or not.

(in reply to trevorc)

Post #: 2

RE: Large Mailboxes - 3.Dec.2007 3:42:33 AM

trevorc

Posts: 64
Joined: 11.Jul.2006
Status: online

Hi,

Thank you for replying and sorry for me replying so late.

This mailbox belongs to one of my directors and he is fixated with wanting to receive the incoming & outgoing emails of 4 other mailboxes. We work in the hotels industry and this director receives & replies to the bookings of about 4 hotels too.

The average size of his emails is about 1mb. He sends and receives approx 200 emails every day...I think this explains the large mailbox. Currently his mailbox is 3.4Gb (71,815 items) and it only has emails of the last 6 months.

The archive files which Outlook 2002 creates can only be a maximum of 1.9Gb so i end up creating a new archive file every 2 months. I archive every folder in his mailbox (Inbox, Sent, Deleted, Calendar + subfolders).

I cannot imagine what else i can do to minimise his mailbox size except maybe ask him to keep emails of the last 4 months instead of the last 6 months (which would not be very convenient to him).

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

_____________________________

Trevor Camilleri
ATD, MCP

(in reply to jassyca)

Post #: 3

RE: Large Mailboxes - 3.Dec.2007 7:43:08 AM

jassyca

Posts: 225
Joined: 20.Jul.2006
Status: offline

hmm.. is it really necessary that he sends 1 meg messages? What is in that message that makes it so large? Probably graphics. And he's probably sending a lot of the same graphics in each of his booking messages so you've got a heckuva lot of same stuff saved over and over and over. If he needs to keep track of what discounts or offers he's sent, there are much better ways of doing it instead of archiving enormous emails.

This sounds similar to something my husband ran into at his job. My husband works as the IT person for a hotel / casino and one of his users used to send really large messages to hundreds of recipients rather often. These messages were, basically, ads for upcoming events at the casino. By sending so many and such large messages, not only was this placing a tough burden on the hotel's email server but that's also something of a burden for the receiving side too and your recipient might eventually start feeling annoyed at constantly being sent something that large. He was able to convince the user to change what they sent. Instead of attaching a flyer filled with cool graphics and so forth, they send a message with just a few graphics and link to a webpage on the hotel's website that details the upcoming event, the discounts, etc. If the person is interested, they'll click the link. It's a win all around because the messages that are sent are smaller so they arrive quicker and the recipient doesn't end up feeling abused because a huge message wasn't shoved into their mailbox.

Just a thought..

(in reply to trevorc)

Post #: 4