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Weird Question - 9.Aug.2006 9:43:43 AM

a.grogan

Posts: 1887
Joined: 12.Apr.2005
From: London
Status: offline

Folks, I know that this question may seem strange - especially to those of us that spend our lives keeping Exchange installations up and running, but I was wondering if anyone know a sure fire way to corrupt an information store.
The reason I ask is that I wish to do a live demo to my team in a test lab in Exchange Database DR and I need a dead information store - any suggestions would be appreciated.

A

Post #: 1

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RE: Weird Question - 9.Aug.2006 2:33:20 PM

a.grogan

Posts: 1887
Joined: 12.Apr.2005
From: London
Status: offline

Don't worry folks, just found a fail safe way to damage the database.

Cheers

(in reply to a.grogan)

Post #: 2

RE: Weird Question - 27.Aug.2006 1:23:29 AM

jmcbee

Posts: 118
Joined: 9.May2005
From: Honolulu, HI
Status: offline

Put it on a SAN?

Just kidding.

I have done some demos where I have corrupted an EDB file by opening it up in an editor (that will edit binary files) such as TextPad and move down through the file past the first 5MB or so, then simply replace on character with another. This will introduce a significant error in that particular page of the database. If you insert data (instead of just replacing data), you will probably toast the entire database beyond even mounting it.

Once you have replaced the single character, you can usually remount the database and do things like run a backup to test what happens. But, please don't do this on one of your production servers. VMWare Server or Virtual Server is cool for things such as this. :-)

_____________________________

Jim McBee, Exchange MVP
Blog: http://mostlyexchange.blogspot.com

(in reply to a.grogan)

Post #: 3

RE: Weird Question - 9.Sep.2006 5:44:38 PM

a.grogan

Posts: 1887
Joined: 12.Apr.2005
From: London
Status: offline

Jim, thanks for that - funnily enough that was the solution I came to (great minds and all that) - hmmmm did think about the SAN idea, but then decided that I didn't want to damage it that badly

- thanks for replying I knew that it was a weird question to ask.

Cheers

A

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MSExchange.org Forums Moderator
For my general ramblings about Exchange please visit my blog:
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(in reply to jmcbee)

Post #: 4